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Savannahs store carbon despite frequent fires

An analysis of carbon stored in the plants and soil of an African savannah suggests that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations — and thus global warming — might be less affected by frequent fires than we thought.
  1. Niall P. Hanan

    1. Niall P. Hanan is in the Jornada Basin Long-Term Ecological Research programme, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico 88003, USA.

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  2. Anthony M. Swemmer

    1. Anthony M. Swemmer is in the South African Environment Observation Network, Phalaborwa 1390, South Africa.

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Savannahs burn more frequently than any other biome, and tropical savannahs alone account for 62% of the carbon dioxide emitted from fires globally1. Strategies involving fire suppression2 or the planting of trees3 in savannahs have therefore been proposed as a means of reducing CO2 emissions and increasing carbon sequestration, thus potentially contributing to the mitigation of global climate change. But it remains unclear whether these measures would make a substantial difference to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. Writing Nature, Zhou et al.4 analyse a long-term fire experiment in Kruger National Park, South Africa, and reveal that the total amount of carbon stored in the ecosystem increases more slowly than expected in the absence of fire — challenging our assumptions about how fire affects carbon storage in savannahs.

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Nature 603, 395-396 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-00689-0

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Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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