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A study published in Nature revealed that European forests are losing their ability to act as carbon sinks.
The main factors behind this are climate change-induced extreme weather events and human activities.
Increased harvest rates, reduced afforestation and slow growth are contributing to this decline.
This threatens the EU's climate targets and highlight the need for improved forest management practices.
Extreme weather events such as droughts and heatwaves, induced by climate change and exacerbated by anthropogenic activities, are declining forest carbon sinks in Europe, a study has found.
The study published in the journal Nature has observed that increased harvest rates, higher natural disturbances, reduced afforestation and slow growth owing to climate change are further affecting the capacity of the forests to capture carbon.
Forests are the primary carbon sinks of Europe, covering 40 per cent of the continent’s land mass. Between 1990 and 2022, forests absorbed about 10 per cent of the EU anthropogenic emissions, the authors of the report noted.
In 2020, Europe’s forests with increased anthropogenic forestation and natural recovery had more than doubled its biomass stocks, enabling it to triple its carbon sink compared to the 1950s.
However, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) inventory from 2024 pointed out that the ability of forests to sequester carbon sank by 27 per cent between 2010-2014 and 2020-2022. The decline in carbon storage was steeper in 2025, the authors added.
EUs forests are also vulnerable with management practices focused on industrial wood production, the authors highlighted. The study said that 30 per cent of Europe’s forests consist of a single tree species, a third of which is spruce, and about 27 per cent are uneven-aged forests.
It warned that rapid loss of forests to act as carbon sink threatens to impact the EU’s climate targets.
The study said the European Climate Law aims for climate neutrality by 2050, with an intermediate goal of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 per cnet by 2030 compared with 1990 levels.
The study said that at present LULUCF sector should currently offset about 8 per cent of gross CO2 emissions and to continue to keep the EU on the path to achieve climate neutrality, it is achieving six per cent, a two per cent deficit. Based on the latest reports on the sink, in some EU countries, the deficit may be higher.
Reduced afforestation and expansion, ageing trees and increase in forest harvest are further adding to the decline of carbon sink. Their contribution and interplay remains often uncertain.
“The increase of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, droughts, and compound heat and drought events, reduces photosynthesis, tree growth and, thereby, the European forest carbon sink,” it observed.
Worsening the crisis, these extreme events trigger widespread forest disturbances, such as megafires, pest outbreaks and windthrow, further impairing forest health and carbon sequestration. These impacts may persist over multiple years, exacerbating tree mortality and carbon sequestration losses, the study added.
Forest soil, which is overlooked, also gets impacted as the carbon in the topsoil gets stored in large amounts of carbon per area in the topsoil.
The researchers said that forest management is a key aspect to reduce and stop the decline of carbon sink. It recommended that the Nature Restoration Regulation that mandates to improve biodiversity and ecosystem by improving standing and lying deadwood, promoting forests with uneven-aged structure with ante tree species and high species diversity could be implemented.
Climate-smart forests, natures based climate solutions, biodiversity friendly afforestation could be other areas to explore.
“Our research has been warning about these effects of climate change and climate extremes since the heat wave of 2003. Now it has been confirmed: they not only affect ecosystems in the short term, but also weaken the carbon uptake of our forests in the long term,” said Markus Reichstein from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, who was part of the study in a statement.
Final summary: A study published in Nature highlighted the declining ability of European forests to act as carbon sinks due to climate change-induced extreme weather and human activities. Factors such as increased harvest rates, reduced afforestation and slow growth are contributing to this decline, threatening the EU's climate targets. Improved forest management practices are essential to address this issue and ensure climate neutrality by 2050.