Study finds Canada could reduce annual carbon emissions five times by planting trees on the edge of the boreal forest

Canada could remove more than five times its annual carbon emissions from the atmosphere by the end of the century by planting trees along the northern edge of the boreal forest, a new study suggests.

In recent decades, forests have been slowly moving northward in response to climate change. In particular, the taiga region at the edge of the boreal forest is a vast forest area that transitions into arctic tundra across northern Canada, Europe, and Russia. The move suggests a potential way to boost carbon sequestration in the region, said study lead author Kevin D’Souza, a postdoctoral fellow in earth and environmental sciences at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

“What potential is there for reforestation in these areas? And how much carbon can be sequestered through reforestation?” he told LiveScience.

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In the new study, his team used satellite data to determine forest composition and open space in the northern boreal forest and ran simulations using models of forestry that included fire probabilities, climate variables, sapling mortality rates, and land type to estimate how much carbon the ecosystem could sequester over the next 75 years.

The simulations identified approximately 6.4 million hectares (15.8 million acres) of land suitable for tree planting across northern Canada, an area approximately twice the size of Vancouver Island. Planting trees on this land would remove nearly four gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere by 2100, about five times Canada’s current annual emissions. But that 6.4 million hectares is a fairly conservative estimate of available land, D’Souza said. Expansion to 32 million hectares (79 million acres) could sequester nearly 20 gigatonnes.

The study was published in Communications Earth & Environmental on November 13, 2025.

Canada had an ambitious plan to plant 2 billion trees by 2031, but it was scrapped last year. As of June 2025, 228 million trees have been planted and the government plans to honor other agreements to plant 988 million trees across the country.

D’Souza said the 2 billion tree plan was hampered by complex logistics and a lack of funding, rather than problems with the science of planting trees. “It wasn’t well planned. Just trying to hit numbers is not the right strategy,” he said. “We need to be more strategic, plant in the right places, have economic and community benefits, and be sustainable.”

Focusing on northern regions could also have the added benefit of helping to stabilize permafrost, D’Souza added. When permafrost thaws, it can release large amounts of methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

long term thinking required

However, another team of experts disagreed with this solution and suggested another way to reduce CO2 using trees instead.

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Wolf Bungen, a professor of environmental systems analysis at the University of Cambridge in the UK who was not involved in the study, told Live Science that while tree planting is good for removing carbon in the short term, few proponents consider the long-term issue of carbon storage.

“Planting trees is good, but it doesn’t solve anything. It’s just buying time,” he says. “It helps while the tree is growing, but eventually it dies and releases carbon again.”

In a study published January 3 in the journal NPJ Climate Action, Bungen and colleagues proposed a longer-term solution. The idea is to cut down trees in the boreal forest and sink them deep into the Arctic Ocean. They suggest targeting large mature trees on specific lands in Canada, Russia, and Alaska. These trees are most susceptible to fire and are less efficient at storing carbon than younger trees. The deep, cold, oxygen-poor waters of the Arctic Ocean will preserve trees and the carbon they contain for thousands of years, he said. New trees can then be planted in the cleared areas to restart the carbon capture cycle.

The researchers proposed that managing just 1% of the boreal forest in this way would remove 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

“Wood already contains a lot of carbon, which naturally flows into the ocean,” he says. “We will be able to accelerate this natural process.”