Land Use and Forestry

Forest lands in the United States are net absorbers of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Absorption is enabled by the reversal of the extensive deforestation of the United States that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since then, millions of acres of formerly cultivated land have been abandoned and have returned to forest, with the regrowth of forests sequestering carbon on a large scale. The process is steadily diminishing, however, because the rate at which forests absorb carbon slows as the trees mature, and because the rate of reforestation has slowed. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates annual U.S. carbon sequestration for the year 2001 at 838.1 million metric tons carbon dioxide equivalent. In 1990, land use change and forestry practices represented an offset of more than 17 percent of total U.S. anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions. By 2001, the offset had declined to 12 percent.

Released: October 2003