Forest soils increasingly extract methane from the atmosphere, long-term study reveals

Forest soils have an important role in protecting our climate: They remove large quantities of methane—a powerful greenhouse gas—from our atmosphere. Researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Baden-Württemberg Forest Research Institute (FVA) have evaluated the world's most comprehensive data set on methane uptake by forest soils. They discovered that under certain climate conditions, which may become more common in the future, forest soils' capacity to absorb methane actually increases.