Land change, fire, and climate weaken carbon sink in the conterminous United States.

ABSTRACT: The land carbon sink of the conterminous United States was evaluated using a bottom-up modeling framework and 30-meter land change data from 1985 to 2020. This cross-scale, cross-landscape, and cross-system approach tracked fractional land cover changes and applied regional model calibration. Results show average terrestrial and aquatic carbon sinks of +110 ± 37 and +19 ± 0.5 teragrams of carbon per year, respectively. The terrestrial carbon sink, showing no clear trend, peaked in the 1990s, with more years as a carbon source since 2000, contradicting recent national and global studies. Land change had the largest impact (-70 ± 5.5 teragrams of carbon per year), exceeding impacts of climate (-33 ± 48 teragrams of carbon per year), wildfire (-7.7 ± 2.4 teragrams of carbon per year), and ero

SUBMITTER: Liu J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12609119 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature