Trees’ methane absorption boosts climate protection

Vincent Gauci has spent more than a decade measuring methane emissions from wetlands. During that time, a growing body of research has emerged detailing how trees in these ecosystems emit methane from their trunks as a consequence of living in anaerobic soils. In an attempt to quantify the rates of methane emissions by trees in other ecosystems, Gauci’s research group made a surprising discovery. Now Gauci, a biogeochemist at the University of Birmingham, has published that research, describing how upland trees actually remove methane from the atmosphere, in stark contrast to what scientists previously thought ( Nature 2024, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07592-w ). Part of what made this such a surprise was that most trees Gauci’s team studies were emitting methane close to the base of the trunk. But as the team made more measurements along the length of the trunk, they noticed that with increasing height, methane emissions would gradually decrease