Seeing the wood for the trees - Is reforesting theScottish Highlands a good way to sequesteratmospheric carbon dioxide?

这个博士项目涉及我们这个时代最紧迫的问题之一;“气候紧急情况”，以及建议使用植树来缓解气候变化。植树固碳是一项缓解气候变化的战略，在国家和国际政策背景下正迅速获得势头（环境署，2011年;纽约森林宣言，2014年）。最近的高调出版物（例如Bastin et al. 2019;刘易斯等人（2019年）强调了植树造林的好处，但由于过度简化了基础科学，夸大了碳（C）封存潜力，并且没有承认在一系列对比鲜明的环境中植树可能产生的不利后果，生态和社会背景（见Bastin等人的评论。2019）。苏格兰目前是一个森林相对稀少的国家（约占土地面积的17%），但可以支持更大的林地覆盖率，就像过去一样。因此，苏格兰政府确定了增加林地覆盖率的年度目标-假设同时增加碳储量-从而有助于减缓气候变化。

This PhD project concerns one of the most pressing issues of our time; the 'Climate Emergency', and the proposed use of tree planting to mitigate climate change. Planting trees for carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration is a mitigation strategy for climate change that is rapidly gaining momentum in national and international policy contexts (UNEP 2011; New York Declaration on Forests 2014). Recent high profile publications (e.g. Bastin et al. 2019; Lewis et al. 2019) have emphasized the benefits of afforestation, but have attracted serious criticism for oversimplifying the underpinning science, exaggerating the carbon (C) sequestration potential and failing to acknowledge the possible adverse consequences of tree planting in a range of contrasting environmental, ecological and social contexts (see commentson Bastin et al. 2019).Scotland is currently a relatively sparsely wooded country (~17% of the land area),but could support a much greater woodland coverage, as it has in the past. The Scottish Government has therefore defined annual targets to increase woodland cover - with an assumed parallel increase in C storage - and hence contribute to climate change mitigation.