{"id":682091,"date":"2026-01-08T11:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T11:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/682091\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T11:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T11:30:11","slug":"germanys-dying-forests-are-losing-their-ability-to-absorb-co2-can-a-new-way-of-planting-save-them-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/682091\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s dying forests are losing their ability to absorb CO2. Can a new way of planting save them? | Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even the intense green of late spring cannot mask the dead trees in the Harz mountains. Standing upright across the gentle peaks in northern Germany<\/a>, thousands of skeletal trunks mark the remnants of a once great spruce forest.<\/p>\n

Since 2018, the region has been ravaged by a tree-killing bark beetle outbreak, made possible by successive droughts and heatwaves. It has transformed a landscape known for its verdant beauty into one dominated by a sickly grey.<\/p>\n

The loss has sparked a reckoning with the modern forestry methods pioneered by Germany that often rely on expanses of monoculture plantations. The ferocity of the beetle outbreak means there is no going back to the old way of doing things: replacing the dead spruce with saplings from the same species would probably guarantee catastrophe once again.<\/p>\n

The devastated Harz forest near Wernigerode, where two-thirds of trees have died. Photograph: Getty<\/p>\n

Instead, foresters have been experimenting with a different approach: pockets of beech, firs and sycamore have been planted around the surviving spruce to make sure the returning forest is more biodiverse. They hope that planting a mixture of species will make the returning landscape more resilient.<\/p>\n

You cannot force the forest to grow \u2013 we cannot command how much their contribution should be towards our climate targets<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThere have been times where we did not have any confidence in what we were doing,\u201d says Mathias A\u00dfmann, a spokesperson for the regional forestry company responsible for this part of the range, pointing out the scars in the landscape from the top of a hill.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou spend the whole day cutting down infected trees. The next day, too, and the next. For months. The whole year: cutting, cutting, cutting. A lot of colleagues have burnout symptoms,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

The rapid loss of the trees has raised scrutiny about how nature can be used to meet climate commitments in a warming world.<\/p>\n

Vast diebacks, such as those seen in the Harz mountains, are becoming increasingly common in Europe as the climate heats, bringing extreme weather and drought. During the peak of the bark beetle outbreak from 2018 to 2021, Germany lost half a million hectares<\/a> (more than 1.2m acres) of forest \u2013 nearly 5% of the country\u2019s total.<\/p>\n

The Czech Republic has lost even more in relative terms and Norway, Sweden, France and Finland are experiencing changes as Europe\u2019s ecosystems strain under increased heat and drought. New research<\/a> from the UK indicates that ancient woodland is increasingly struggling to regenerate. Foresters in Greece report huge diebacks<\/a> of the country\u2019s firs, and peatlands across Europe are drying out.<\/p>\n

The Harz forest\u2019s bark beetle infestation has been made worse by climate change, as successive years of dry weather fatally weakened many of the trees. Photograph: Sean Gallup\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The consequences are starting to filter through in official statistics. In July, scientists released a significant downwards revision<\/a> of how much carbon is being removed by land in the EU, driven by the weakening forest carbon sink. Since 2010, the amount absorbed by land has fallen by a third<\/a> and continues to decline.<\/p>\n

Figures published in 2024 in Germany show a major spike in emissions<\/a> between 2017 and 2022 from the bark beetle outbreak and drought, mirroring other member states. The speed of the fall in the amount of carbon removed by Europe\u2019s forests was not expected, say experts, and is already pushing climate targets out of reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe EU and Germany can set their political goals but \u2026 what we have experienced since 2018 is that forests are strongly affected by drought. It is a significant dieback. We have huge carbon stocks that are dying and which no longer contribute to a carbon sink,\u201d says Prof Matthias Dieter, head of the Th\u00fcnen Institute of Forestry, explaining that Germany is now almost certain to miss its carbon sequestration target for land.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou cannot force the forest to grow \u2013 we cannot command how much their contribution should be towards our climate targets,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

A bark beetle on a dead spruce in the Harz mountains. Recurring droughts make stressed trees more susceptible to pests. Photograph: Jens Schl\u00fcter\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Debate about whether it makes sense to include land and nature\u2019s role in country-level climate targets is growing among experts. Supporters say it requires governments to think carefully about their natural resources and should push them to harness nature to help absorb greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

Forests, oceans and other natural carbon sinks already absorb about half of human emissions \u2013 and any increase could help. But many argue that it should be separated as it allows governments to assume nature can replace decarbonisation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens is that countries use their carbon sink \u2013 or assumptions about their carbon sink \u2013 as an offset against going slower on phasing out black carbon sources like oil, coil and gas. That is very dangerous because it means that countries can use their carbon sink from forests to claim they are net zero without fully phasing out fossil fuels,\u201d says Johan Rockstr\u00f6m, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.<\/p>\n

Already, countries such as Finland<\/a> have become examples of the risks of this approach. The Nordic country is aiming to reach its carbon neutrality just a decade from now in 2035, using immense forests and peatlands that cover 70% of the country to draw down carbon from the atmosphere. But since 2010, the amount of carbon absorbed by them has declined dramatically<\/a> and its forests and peatlands have become a small net contributor<\/a> to global heating in recent years.<\/p>\n

On the way to a hearty lunch of currywurst and chips, A\u00dfmann and his forester colleague Ralf Kr\u00fcger stop the car lower down the valley to show their vision for the Harz mountains. We wander into an airy mass of green, where a mix of species are growing. Huge oaks, maple and beech trees shoot up to the canopy, Douglas fir and spruce saplings cover the ground below. The dappled sunlight on the forest floor is a sharp contrast to the gloomy areas of spruce monoculture that survived the bark beetle.<\/p>\n

Mixed woodland next to dead spruces. The Harz forestry service is planting saplings but recovery will take years. Photograph: Arterra\/Universal\/Getty<\/p>\n

\u201cWe use this for showing people our idea for the future,\u201d says Kr\u00fcger.<\/p>\n

Here, instead of cutting down dead trees, the state forestry company is concentrating on using biodiversity to improve the resilience of the recovering forests by planting a mixture of species. Over time, the hope is that the species will provide a diverse landscape that they can selectively harvest while also avoiding a calamity akin to the recent bark beetle outbreaks.<\/p>\n

Research internationally has shown that biodiversity can help protect forests against drought: a 2018 study in Nature<\/a> found that tree diversity was the best protection against drought die-offs and research published in PNAS last year<\/a> found that species richness protected tree growth during prolonged seasons of drought. Monocultures are far more vulnerable \u2013 not only to drought, but also to outbreaks of disease, bark beetle and wildfires, all of which are eating away at the world\u2019s carbon sinks.<\/p>\n

The Harz mountain range has withstood major challenges before. It has endured large-scale forest loss for mining since the 16th century. In the 1980s, it was acid rain that poured down on to the trees from coal emissions in the east, killing some of the trees here. Before that, it was the second world war \u2013 in which huge areas were clearcut to pay for British reparations<\/a> in the aftermath. But A\u00dfmann says a new approach will be needed during a time of intense global heating.<\/p>\n

A young volunteer with a sycamore \u2013 one of 9,000 deciduous saplings planted near Elend as part of Saxony-Anhalt\u2019s Heiermann4future reforestation initiative. Photograph: Dpa\/Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if there are pests like bark beetles on spruce, it doesn\u2019t matter because there are young trees beneath it. They can grow and the forest as a whole won\u2019t disappear because there\u2019s only one spruce next to a Douglas fir, next to the beech and so on,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

These healthier forests, A\u00dfmann says, can also offer hope for those disturbed by seeing the trees that are lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people worked in these forests for 40 years and in just three years, all their work is gone: cut down and put in a truck. It\u2019s very hard for them. So this place is good for their soul. It\u2019s a good goal for them to work towards,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Find more age of extinction coverage here<\/a>, and follow the biodiversity reporters Phoebe Weston<\/a> and Patrick Greenfield<\/a> in the Guardian app for more nature coverage<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even the intense green of late spring cannot mask the dead trees in the Harz mountains. Standing upright…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":682092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-682091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-northern-ireland","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115859254466627994","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=682091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/682091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/682092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=682091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=682091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=682091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}