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Across Munich\u2019s streets and parks, clusters of trees quietly pull carbon dioxide from the air while vehicles release it only blocks away.<\/p>\n
By mapping those exchanges at street scale, Jia Chen at the Technical University of Munich (TUM<\/a>) documented where urban vegetation actually removes carbon from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n During warm summer days, the strongest absorption occurs when active leaf growth pulls carbon into wood and living tissue faster than surrounding sources release it.<\/p>\n Understanding exactly where and when that balance changes becomes essential before cities can evaluate how different kinds of green space influence their carbon budgets.<\/p>\n Trees absorb the most carbon<\/p>\n Citywide totals hid the detail, but tree canopy still emerged as a carbon sink<\/a>, removing more CO2 than it released.<\/p>\n During daylight, leaves grabbed CO2 in photosynthesis, and some of that carbon stayed locked in new wood.<\/p>\n In Munich, all vegetation together offset a small share of the city\u2019s yearly carbon dioxide emissions from human activities.<\/p>\n Even a few percent can matter when a city tries to spot missing sources and measure progress year to year.<\/p>\n Lawns release carbon dioxide<\/p>\n Short grass and park lawns behaved very differently from tree canopies when researchers measured carbon dioxide across Munich. Under the surface, soil respiration<\/a> kept pumping carbon upward day and night.<\/p>\n Because soil respiration exceeded photosynthesis, grassy areas released more carbon dioxide than they bound on an annual basis.<\/p>\n Management choices like watering, fertilizing, and mowing can push those balances around, so a lawn\u2019s climate role is not fixed.<\/p>\n Summer boosts carbon absorption<\/p>\n Warm, bright days drove the biggest swings, since photosynthesis speeds up with light and good growing conditions.<\/p>\n After dark, leaves stop absorbing CO2, but plants and soils continue to respire, so the net exchange can turn positive.<\/p>\n During winter, deciduous trees lost their leaf area, and uptake shrank while background respiration continued across lawns and roots.<\/p>\n Season-by-season maps can guide when to irrigate, prune, or protect soils instead of treating green space as unchanging.<\/p>\n Field tests confirm results<\/p>\n The researchers tied their city maps to direct measurements in parks and forests.<\/p>\n To test the numbers, technicians monitored trees and soils on site, and then compared those signals with what the map expected.<\/p>\n From April 2024 through February 2025, the group collected plant-and-soil field measurements in urban parks to validate the model.<\/p>\n Those checks showed strong agreement overall, while also flagging places where summer respiration or season timing still needs work.<\/p>\n Satellite pixels mix surfaces<\/p>\n A satellite pixel can cover both leaves and pavement, so a single number may describe two very different surfaces.<\/p>\n When impervious surfaces, pavement and roofs that water cannot soak into, share a pixel, greenery can look weaker than it is.<\/p>\n In Munich, about 35% of vegetated pixels included some sealed surface, especially near street trees and grass strips.<\/p>\n That mixing can skew city totals and park-level comparisons, making high-resolution maps most useful when paired with local observation.<\/p>\n Planning with better numbers<\/p>\n Better maps can tighten an emissions inventory<\/a>, a city\u2019s running count of greenhouse gases, so policy debates use the same numbers.<\/p>\n By separating plant-driven CO2 exchange from traffic and heating sources, analysts can spot where the bookkeeping still misses reality.<\/p>\n After Munich and Zurich in Switzerland, the team plans to apply the same approach in other cities that want fine-grain climate tracking.<\/p>\n With clearer evidence, planners can defend protecting street trees and redesigning parks without pretending every green patch helps equally.<\/p>\n Benefits of urban trees<\/p>\n Urban trees provide cooling, stormwater control, and public health benefits that make green space valuable beyond carbon uptake.<\/p>\n Shade blocks sunlight, and evapotranspiration \u2013 water pulled up and released as vapor \u2013 cools the air as it leaves the trees.<\/p>\n \u201cAmong other things, they lower the temperature in the city in summer, serve as infiltration areas, and improve the quality of life,\u201d said Chen.<\/p>\n Even when carbon math disappoints, shade trees still cool streets and handle stormwater, so city choices stay complicated.<\/p>\n Carbon varies across blocks<\/p>\n Pocket parks, street trees, and backyard gardens formed a patchwork, so carbon uptake rose and fell across short distances.<\/p>\n Instead of averaging that away, Chen\u2019s map highlighted which corners of a city actually changed the air\u2019s CO2 balance.<\/p>\n \u201cOur high-resolution analysis reveals which areas actually have an impact on the climate,\u201d says Chen.<\/p>\n Block-by-block maps make it easier to explain tradeoffs to residents because the climate role of green space becomes clear instead of abstract.<\/p>\n The study is published in the journal Earth\u2019s Future<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a> for engaging articles, exclusive content, and the latest updates.\u00a0<\/p>\n Check us out on EarthSnap<\/a>, a free app brought to you by Eric Ralls<\/a> and Earth.com.<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists have found that city trees act as the dominant carbon sink within urban landscapes, absorbing more carbon…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-523937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}