Polyculture doubles CO2 sequestration (online)

Species-rich forests store twice as much carbon as monocultures

Species-rich subtropical forests can take up, on average, twice as much carbon as monocultures. An international research team with the involvement of the University of Zurich has evaluated data from forests grown specifically for this purpose in China with a total of over 150,000 trees. After eight years, such species-rich forest plots stored an average of 32 tons of carbon per hectare in above ground biomass. By contrast, monocultures averaged only 12 tons of carbon per hectare—less than half as much.