India’s forests could nearly double carbon storage by 2100, study finds

India’s forests could store nearly twice as much carbon by the end of this century as they do now if current greenhouse gas emission trends continue, according to a new modelling study published this week in the journal Environmental Research: Climate.

The findings, involving researchers from multiple Indian institutes, present a granular forecast of how climate change will reshape the country’s forest carbon stocks. Significantly, they diverge in important ways from official estimates compiled by the Forest Survey of India (FSI) – the official source of tree and forest cover data in India.