Opportunities for carbon sequestration from removing or intensifying pasture-based beef production.

ABSTRACT: Pastures, on which ruminant livestock graze, occupy one third of the earth's surface. Removing livestock from pastures can support climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration in regrowing vegetation and recovering soils, particularly in potentially forested areas. However, this would also decrease food and fiber production, generating a tradeoff with pasture productivity and the ruminant meat production pastures support. We evaluate the magnitude and distribution of this tradeoff globally, called the "carbon opportunity intensity" of pastures, at a 5-arcminute resolution. We find that removing beef-producing cattle from high-carbon intensity pastures could sequester 34 (22 to 43) GtC i.e. 125 (80 to 158) GtCO₂ into ecosystems, which is an amount greater than global fo

SUBMITTER: Hayek MN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11572965 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature