Book 17, Question 39
How Do Rainforest Trees Soak Up Carbon Dioxide and Store It?
Leaves take in carbon dioxide from the air. With sunlight and water, they use it to make sugars. The tree uses that carbon to build wood, leaves, and roots.
More fun facts
- Growing forests store carbon by pulling carbon dioxide out of the air.
- A NASA led team used satellites to make a detailed map of the carbon stored in tropical forests in 75 countries.
- They used a laser instrument on NASA's ICESat satellite, which measures how tall the forest is, plus measurements taken on the ground.
- In the early 2000s, those tropical forests held about 247 billion tons of carbon.
- For comparison, about 10 billion tons of carbon is released into the air each year from burning fossil fuels and changing how land is used.
- Forests in Latin America hold 49 percent of the carbon in the world's tropical forests.
- Brazil's forests alone store about 61 billion tons, almost as much as all of sub Saharan Africa at 62 billion tons.
- Cutting down and damaging forests causes 15 to 20 percent of the world's carbon emissions.
Sources: NASA, Smithsonian
Questions kids ask
Why do scientists need maps of forest carbon?
The maps show where carbon is stored, which helps countries track and protect the forests that hold the most.