(Press-News.org) The study, published in Nature Climate Change and led by scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) analysed future projections across five large-scale modelling projects, as well as considering 135,000 species and 70 biodiversity hotspots, to produce spatial mapping of where land-based carbon removal may be sited in the future.
The authors’ approach allows for a risk–risk assessment, not only focusing on overlaps between biodiversity areas and land allocated to carbon dioxide removal (CDR), but also showing the positive impacts of CDR in avoiding climate impacts on biodiversity. The work on the biodiversity importance was led by the Wallace Initiative under Dr. Jeff Price, with researchers from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia and James Cook University, Australia.
In ambitious emissions reductions scenarios, where global warming returns to 1.5°C by 2100 after temporarily overshooting this limit, up to 13 percent of areas allocated to CDR would overlap with important biodiversity sites. The authors emphasise that this would not necessarily mean the loss of these areas, depending on the specific implementation of removals. Nevertheless, given how sensitive some species are to human intervention, this remains a concern.
Careful site selection for carbon removal is critical
“As the world warms, we should be responding by cutting emissions as quickly as possible, but we are also going to need to be scaling carbon removal,” said Ruben Prütz, a PIK researcher and lead author of the study. “We can see from our maps that CDR has the potential to encroach on the areas that shelter biodiversity from harm in a warmer world. Careful site selection for carbon removal is thus critical to preventing negative biodiversity outcomes.”
Increased land use change for carbon removal could also conflict with internationally agreed targets for biodiversity conservation. The 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework aims to “bring the loss of areas of high biodiversity importance, including ecosystems of high ecological integrity, close to zero by 2030”.
Other carbon dioxide removal technologies, such as direct air carbon capture and storage, could supplement land-based options and reduce spatial competition , but these are in earlier phases of technological development and much more expensive.
Benefits for biodiversity through carbon dioxide removal
However, the risk–risk analysis also reveals that the effects of carbon removal on temperatures could have positive outcomes for biodiversity. The study shows that effective implementation of reforestation and BECCS could reduce the long-term loss of biodiversity due to climate factors by up to 25 percent, producing net benefits. But the authors stress that positive outcomes depend on the ability of these ecosystems to recover from higher peak temperatures, which is extremely uncertain.
“We have to recognise that our continued use of fossil fuels is both punishing us, as we suffer from extreme events and other climate impacts, and reducing the tools we have to implement solutions,” Prütz concluded.
Equity and land-based CDR
Land use change for carbon removal is also unequally distributed across different regions of the world. The models allocate up to 15 percent of biodiversity-relevant land in low and middle-income countries to forest-based carbon removal, compared to just 7 percent in wealthy countries.
“This puts a greater burden on the countries who have historically contributed less to emissions,” said Sabine Fuss, PIK researcher and a co-author of the paper. “It also stresses the need for international finance to flow from wealthier countries to those that need it for biodiversity protection, to safeguard a common good.”
Article: Prütz, R., Rogelj, J., Ganti, G., Price, J., Warren, R., Forstenhäusler, N., Wu, Y., Augustynczik, A. L. D., Wögerer, M., Krisztin, T., Havlík, P., Kraxner, F., Frank, S., Hasegawa, M., Doelman, J., Daioglou, V., Humpenöder, F., Popp, A., Fuss, S., (2026): Biodiversity implications of land-intensive carbon dioxide removal. – Nature Climate Change. [DOI: 10.1038/s41558-026-02557-5]
END
Land-intensive carbon removal requires better siting to protect biodiversity
2026-01-30
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Devastation of island land snails, especially in the Pacific
2026-01-30
A comprehensive new review paper reveals the staggering loss of biodiversity among island land snails globally. Lead author Robert Cowie of the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) and co-authors note that ‘devastation’ is not a hyperbolic term, pointing out that extinction rates on high volcanic islands commonly range from 30% to as high as 80%. The review was published recently in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.
Tracking trends through the ‘shell bank’
While the review is global in scope, Cowie, along with Philippe Bouchet and Benoît ...
Microwaves help turn sugar industry waste into high-performance biochar
2026-01-30
Agricultural waste from the global sugar industry could become a powerful tool for clean energy, pollution control, and sustainable materials, thanks to new research showing how microwave technology can dramatically improve biochar production.
In a study published in Sustainable Materials and Chemicals, researchers report that microwave-assisted pyrolysis can be precisely optimized to convert sugarcane bagasse, the fibrous residue left after sugar extraction, into highly porous biochar with exceptional surface ...
From craft dust to green gold: Turning palm handicraft waste into high value bio based chemicals
2026-01-30
Mannan rich palm handicraft waste, such as tagua nuts and bodhi roots, can be turned into valuable green chemicals instead of being burned or discarded, according to a new study.
“In many parts of the world, polished palm seeds are carved into jewelry and religious beads, but the cutting and drilling leave behind piles of fine powder that usually end up as waste,” said first author Bin Hu of North China Electric Power University. “Our work shows that this overlooked by product can become a promising feedstock for clean chemical production.”
The researchers examined two popular palm based handicraft materials: tagua nuts from Ecuador, sometimes called “vegetable ...
New roadmap shows how to turn farm nitrogen models into real world water quality gains
2026-01-30
“A lot of governments are spending serious money on farm conservation, yet the rivers are not getting cleaner as fast as people expect,” said lead author Yi Pan of Zhejiang University in China. “Our work shows that the problem is not that best management practices are useless. It is that our planning tools have been aiming at the wrong processes, the wrong places, and the wrong time scales for nitrogen.”
The new review pulls together advances in hydrology, computer modeling, and social science to propose a practical optimization framework tailored specifically to agricultural nitrogen, one of the ...
Heart damage is common after an operation and often goes unnoticed, but patients who see a cardiologist may be less likely to die or suffer heart disease as a result
2026-01-30
An estimated 4.2 million people die within 30 days of surgery worldwide each year. A new study, published in the European Heart Journal [1] today (Thursday), suggests that deaths and serious heart disease might be prevented if some patients see a specialist heart doctor as part of their post-surgery care.
In this observational study, researchers studied a group of patients who had suffered heart damage during or immediately after non-cardiac surgery. A proportion were evaluated by a cardiologist, but the rest were not. Patients who saw a cardiologist were less likely ...
New tool exposes scale of fake research flooding cancer science
2026-01-30
A new machine learning tool has identified more than 250,000 cancer research papers that may have been produced by so-called “paper mills”.
Developed by QUT researcher Professor Adrian Barnett, from the School of Public Health and Social Work and Australian Centre for Health Services and Innovation (AusHSI), and an international team of collaborators, the study, published in The BMJ, analysed 2.6 million cancer studies from 1999 to 2024.
It found more than 250,000 papers with writing patterns similar to articles already retracted for suspected fabrication.
“Paper mills are companies that sell fake or low-quality scientific studies. They are producing ‘research’ ...
Researchers identify new blood markers that may detect early pancreatic cancer
2026-01-30
For Immediate Release
Friday, January 30, 2026
Contact:
NIH Office of Communications
National Institutes of Health (NIH)-supported investigators have developed a blood test to find pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, one of the deadliest forms of cancer. The new test could improve survival rates from pancreatic cancer, which tends to be diagnosed at late stages when therapy is less likely to be effective. The findings were published in Clinical Cancer Research.
Overall, only about 1 in 10 pancreatic cancer patients survive more than five years from diagnosis. However, experts expect that when ...
Scientists uncover why some brain cells resist Alzheimer's disease
2026-01-30
New research by UCLA Health and UC San Francisco has uncovered why certain brain cells are more resilient than others to the buildup of a toxic protein that is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, potentially leading to new targets for therapies or treatments.
The study, published in the journal Cell, used a novel CRISPR-based genetic screening approach on lab-grown human brain cells to determine the cellular machinery that controls the accumulation of tau protein in the brain. These proteins can build up as toxic clumps in the brain, killing ...
The Lancet: AI-supported mammography screening results in fewer aggressive and advanced breast cancers, finds full results from first randomized controlled trial
2026-01-30
First full results of a randomised trial investigating the use of AI in a national breast cancer screening programme finds AI-supported mammography screening is more effective across many measures than standard mammography.
AI-supported breast cancer screening identified more women with clinically relevant cancers during the screening without a higher rate of false positives.
Additionally, women who underwent AI-supported screening were less likely to be diagnosed with more aggressive and advanced breast cancer in the two years following.
Authors say these findings could justify implementing AI in mammography screening programmes, particularly in the context of health ...
New AI tool improves treatment of cancer patients after heart attack
2026-01-30
Cancer patients who suffer a heart attack face a dangerous mix of risks, which makes their clinical treatment particularly challenging. As a result, patients with cancer have been systematically excluded from many clinical trials and available risk scores. Until now, doctors had no standard tool to guide treatment in this vulnerable group.
International study leverages population data
An international team led by researchers from the University of Zurich (UZH) has now developed the first risk prediction model designed specifically for cancer patients who have had a heart attack. The study, published in The Lancet, analyzed more than one million heart attack patients in England, Sweden ...