By Savannah Gupton ,  Mark Bradford ,  Alex Polussa ,  Sara E. Kuebbing  and  Emily E. Oldfield , Eos/AGU. Excerpt: In the modern era, the necessity to adapt has led to expansive land use, fertilization, irrigation, and other agricultural routines—powered primarily by combusted carbon and freshwater extractions—to suit local environmental conditions and meet demands of growing populations. These practices have been a boon to food supplies, but have also contributed to many of today’s  climatic  and  environmental   challenges . ...the  Paris Agreement  ...  legally binds  participating nations to implement land use methods that mitigate emissions and actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. One such set of  modified land management practices , known collectively as climate-smart agriculture [ U.S. Department of Agriculture , 2025], is lauded as a pragmatic, low-barrier pathway to manage climate change through natur...

By Mohana Basu , Nature.  Excerpt: The planet’s capacity to store carbon-dioxide emissions in rock formations is much smaller than previous estimates suggest, and it could run out as early as 2200, according to a study 1  published in  Nature  today. To meet the goal of the  2015 Paris agreement  — limiting global warming to 1.5–2 °C above pre-industrial temperatures — vast amounts of CO 2  will need to be removed from the atmosphere. One way to do that is to  capture CO 2  produced by industry and store it deep underground. Researchers report that Earth can safely store around 1,460 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (GtCO₂) — a number much lower than the 10,000–40,000 GtCO₂ often cited in previous studies 2 . At present, carbon capture and storage technologies remove only 49 million tonnes of CO₂ annually, with a further 416 million tonnes per year in planned capacity, say the authors of the study. But to stay within the Paris target, annual carb...

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aca4e8 By Stuart Jenkins, et al, Environmental Research Letters.  Excerpt: ...an opportunity: to open a conversation about applying the principle of extended producer responsibility (EPR) to fossil fuels. ...Implementing EPR through a combination of geological CO 2  storage and nature-based solutions can deliver net zero at comparable or lower costs than conventional scenarios driven with a global carbon price and subject to constraints on CO 2  storage deployment. It would also mean that the principal beneficiary of high fossil fuel prices, the fossil fuel industry itself, plays its part in addressing the climate challenge while reducing the risk of asset stranding. ...Under EPR as implemented in France, for example, a 'producer', meaning 'any natural or legal person who develops, manufactures, handles, treats, sells or imports waste-generating products', 'may be required [...] to provide or contribute to the pre...

https://eos.org/articles/good-news-rocks-crack-under-pressure-from-mineral-co2-storage By  Kimberly M. S. Cartier , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: When carbon mineralizes in stone, each new fracture exposes more surfaces that can react with and trap CO 2 , enhancing a rock’s storage capacity. As concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) continue to rise and drive climate change, scientists have been researching options not just to reduce CO 2  emissions but also to actually remove carbon from the atmosphere. Many carbon capture and storage methods seek to trap gaseous or water-dissolved CO 2  in underground storage reservoirs, but these could leak and release greenhouse gas back into the atmosphere. “When you inject CO 2  in a gas form, it can escape, for example, if a fault is moving or there is damage to the reservoir. It is always going to be looking for a way to escape to an area where the pressure is lower,” explained  Catalina Sanchez-Roa , an experim...

https://eos.org/articles/large-herbivores-may-improve-an-ecosystems-carbon-persistence By  Rishika Pardikar , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: The grazing habits of wild animals like elephants and boars enable long-term carbon storage, according to new research that stresses the need to align climate mitigation goals with biodiversity conservation.…

https://eos.org/features/community-forests-prepare-for-climate-change Source: By Courtney L. Peterson, Leslie A. Brandt, Emile H. Elias, and Sarah R. Hurteau, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...many locales are feeling the heat as urban, or community, forests— defined  by the U.S. Forest Service as “the aggregate of all public and private vegetation and green space within a community that provide a myriad of environmental, health and economic benefits”—struggle against a multitude of stressors stemming from climate change. Forest pests and diseases are expanding their ranges, for example, and heat, megadroughts, and shifts in the amounts and timing of precipitation are changing water availability—all contributing to a looming urban tree crisis. ...The importance of urban trees is often overlooked. In the United States, community forests save an estimated $18.3 billion annually by providing ecosystem services like air and water pollution removal, carbon sequestration, carbon storage, ene...