Nature: The best way to manage forests to store carbon and to mitigate climate change is hotly debated. Trees absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and wood can be a substitute for fossil fuels and carbon-intensive materials such as concrete and steel. In the past few decades, the world's forests have absorbed as much as 30% (2 petagrams of carbon per year; Pg C year-1) of annual global anthropogenic CO2 emissions1 -- about the same amount as the oceans. Two-thirds of forests are managed.
Much has...