Science reports:

The discovery of an eastern red cedar log, buried in eastern Canada for millennia and nearly perfectly preserved, illustrates the potential of a new kind of carbon storage scheme in the fight against climate change: wood “vaults.” The log shows how burying wood—rather than letting it decay on the surface—could keep billions of tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere, advocates say.

The unusual conditions that preserved the log, described today in a paper in Science, provides “a single data point, but it’s a very critical one,” for the wood vault strategy, says Ning Zeng, a climate scientist at the University of Maryland who is the lead scientist on the study.

Many researchers believe limiting greenhouse gas emissions—though essential—won’t be enough to curb dangerous amounts of warming. So some researchers and companies are pursuing ways to remove CO2 from the environment. Some want to actively strip CO2 from the atmosphere or ocean. Others want to keep CO2 from getting into the atmosphere in the first place—for example, by capturing CO₂ at smokestacks and pumping it into rock formations for long-term storage, or by burying biomass at sea, where its carbon can remained locked up for centuries. [Continue reading…]