Revised and updated geospatial monitoring of  21st century forest carbon fluxes

Gibbs, David A.; Rose, Melissa; Grassi, Giacomo; Melo, Joana; Rossi, Simone; Heinrich, Viola; Harris, Nancy L.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1217-2025

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1217-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-17-1217-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 17, issue 3

Data description paper

|

26 Mar 2025

Data description paper |

| 26 Mar 2025

Revised and updated geospatial monitoring of 21st century forest carbon fluxes

David A. Gibbs, Melissa Rose, Giacomo Grassi, Joana Melo, Simone Rossi, Viola Heinrich, and Nancy L. Harris

Data sets

Forest greenhouse gas emissions D. A. Gibbs et al. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/LNPSGP

Forest carbon removals D. A. Gibbs et al. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/V2ISRH

Forest greenhouse gas net flux D. A. Gibbs et al. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/TVZVBI

Model code and software

GFW flux model code D. A. Gibbs et al. https://github.com/wri/carbon-budget

Short summary

Updated global maps of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and sequestration by forests from 2001 onwards using satellite-derived data show that forests are strong net carbon sinks, capturing about as much CO₂ each year on average as the USA emitted from fossil fuels in 2019. After reclassifying fluxes to countries’ reporting categories for national GHG inventories, we found that roughly two-thirds of the net CO₂ flux from forests is anthropogenic and one-third is non-anthropogenic.