California's overlooked landscapes sequester a lot of carbon

Often dismissed as "brush" or wastelands, California's open spaces offer carbon storage

Sprawl is a hallmark of southern California. While Los Angeles is the big offender, with freeways and humanity spreading in all directions, it’s a problem throughout the state. All those spread-out houses and parking lots accelerate climate change. Almost all new business and housing developments require people to get around in their cars, which spew planet-warming CO2 out of their tailpipes. But there are also hidden costs to the climate as we spread out more office parks and developments. Every acre where we build new houses and shopping malls is an acre that could be sequestering carbon.

A new report from the Center For Biological Diversity tells us that not only are we losing habitat, we also lose the carbon sequestration capabilities of the open spaces we are bulldozing. The report was authored by conservation scientist Tiffany Yap, Deserts Director and senior scientist at the center, Ileene Anderson, also a senior scientist, and Aruna Prabhala, the center’s Urban Wildlands Director and senior attorney. The Center For Biological Diversity announced the report on Monday, July 24.

With their vast expanses, forests store the largest percentage of carbon compared to most other bioregions, yet deserts, chaparral and other landscapes nonetheless sequester carbon, sometimes in surprising amounts.

According to the report, a forest stores about 48.6 metric tons of carbon per acre and sequesters about a ton and a half to three tons in an acre in a year’s time. In contrast, deserts store about 4.17 metric tons of carbon per acre, mostly in their arid soils. Their carbon storing ability may increase, however, as studies have shone that desert soils store more carbon as the level of carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere. The authors suggest that, as the desert areas of California are so vast, their sequestering capabilities should not be ignored.