Wild fires are burning forests carbon sinks, but China bucking the trend with a massive desert forestation project

Extreme weather has led to an explosion of deadly wildfires around the world that are turning forests that should be a CO₂ sink into major sources of additional emissions as the area that burns each year expands.

Europe saw a record million hectares of forest burn in 2025, the largest area ever, that turns wood that has been storing CO₂ for decades into gas again. The expansion of wildfires has become so acute that investors have been rushing to buy catastrophe bonds to cash in on the escalating costs caused by fires that can burn down cities and entire regions.

The problems are even worse in Latin America where land clearing for agriculture has been reducing the forested area. One of the few places where the trend is going in the opposite direction is China where the government has planted a massive “green belt” of new trees in the Taklamakan desert, turning the barren belt into a new carbon sink.

Already this year 23 people were left dead in Chile and devastated forests in Argentina burning some of the world’s oldest trees that have been storing carbon for centuries. Global warming causing extreme conditions have made fires about three times more likely, scientists have found.

Researchers from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) consortium concluded that the hot, dry and windy weather that allowed fires to spread across vast areas in January was significantly intensified by human-caused climate change, The Guardian reported on February 13. The study found that parts of Chile and Argentina are now experiencing markedly drier summers, with rainfall 25% lower in early summer in Chile and 20% lower in the affected region of Patagonia.

Severe wildfires placed Chile’s Biobío and Ñuble regions in a “state of catastrophe” in mid-January as blazes destroyed more than 1,000 homes and forced 52,000 residents to flee as temperatures exceeded 37°C and strong winds fanned the flames.

In Argentina, fires broke out in early January in the UNESCO-listed Los Alerces national park in Patagonia, home to ancient alerce trees that can live for more than 3,000 years. Scientists warned that such ecosystems are increasingly vulnerable to prolonged drought and heat linked to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Dr Clair Barnes of Imperial College London, part of the WWA team, told the Guardian: “Our analysis shows a clear and dangerous fingerprint of climate change on these fires. By burning fossil fuels, we have essentially loaded the dice, making the conditions for these devastating blazes more likely.”

The situation in Chile was exacerbated by non-native tree plantations, which are more flammable than native forests and often located near populated areas. “These plantations are located directly next to settlements, as was seen in Valparaíso in 2024,” said Mauricio Santos-Vega of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. Wildfires in Valparaíso and surrounding regions in 2024 left at least 131 people dead.

China tree-planting turns the Taklamakan desert into carbon sink

Mass tree planting around the fringes of China’s Taklamakan Desert has transformed parts of what was long considered a “biological void” into a net carbon sink, with vegetation now absorbing more carbon dioxide than the desert emits, according to new research.

The findings, reported by Live Science on February 11, suggest that decades of ecological engineering under Beijing’s Three-North Shelterbelt Programme — also known as the “Great Green Wall” — are beginning to alter the carbon balance of one of the world’s largest and driest deserts.

The Taklamakan Desert spans about 337,000 square kilometres, slightly larger than Montana, and is encircled by high mountain ranges that block moist air for most of the year. Over 95% of its surface is shifting sand. Since 1978, however, China has planted billions of trees along the margins of the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts in an effort to curb desertification. More than 66bn trees have been planted across northern China to date, and forest cover nationwide has risen from 10% in 1949 to more than 25% today. In 2024, China completed a vegetative belt encircling the Taklamakan.

Researchers analysed 25 years of ground observations and satellite data on vegetation cover, precipitation, photosynthesis and CO₂ fluxes, alongside modelling from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Carbon Tracker. The results, published on January 19 in PNAS, show expanding vegetation and rising CO₂ uptake along the desert’s edges, coinciding in time and location with the afforestation programme.

“We found, for the first time, that human-led intervention can effectively enhance carbon sequestration in even the most extreme arid landscapes, demonstrating the potential to transform a desert into a carbon sink and halt desertification,” said Yuk Yung, professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

During the wet season from July to September, precipitation averages about 16 millimetres per month — 2.5 times higher than in the dry season — boosting vegetation growth and photosynthesis. Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over the desert fall from 416 parts per million in the dry season to 413 ppm in the wet season.

“Based on the results of this study, the Taklamakan Desert, although only around its rim, represents the first successful model demonstrating the possibility of transforming a desert into a carbon sink,” Yung said, adding that its role “may serve as a valuable model for other desert regions.”