November 2025

A Surprising Revelation

Trees vs. Meadows  for Carbon Absorption

For more than a century America’s the US Forest Service and the majority of conservationists have embraced the idea that conservation is about the planting of trees to help reduce the amount of carbon in the air.  In the Biden administration alone, there was a program to plant 1 billion trees in the US.

What if the premise that trees are the answer for carbon reduction is flawed?

Scientific break throughs

We know that when the Europeans came to settle they were not greeted with woodland forests but with large swaths of prairies and savannas.

We know this because in part scientists have begun discovering tiny still-intact seeds in forgotten grasslands and plant communities that have been here for thousands of years. Grasslands that have managed to survive and not be turned into farmland or a parking lot hold a lot more plant and animal life than forests.  Scientific studies tell us that planting meadows removes a lot more carbon from the atmosphere than forests.

One conservationist describes ‘a typical site’ in the US.

‘… where Bud and Corona beer cans litter the road; where power lines cut through the land; and  where miscellaneous papers and litter scatter across the ground.  Cars whiz by and cranes and dump trucks can be heard beeping as they work close by. A new data center is being built which as we all know destroys the land it is built on.’

Across the street he saw a 300 year old oak and later discovered with that it was surrounded by 56 species of plants in a mere 300 square feet.  This swath of land included:

Parlin’s pussy toes,

grass-leaf blazing star

and false foxglove.

These are just a few of the 1700 varieties of seeds that have been found in Virginia so far.

Forensics have found by using carbon dating that some seeds go back 2000 years and others date back to the Ice Age. 

Seed bank extrapolation shown below.

Scientist say there are no remnants of the prairies in much of the contemporary landscapes. It took a while for scientists to figure out where to look because much of the grasslands have been developed or turned into forests.

The most exciting plots left are usually single acre areas along road sides and under power lines.

Grasslands are about 40 percent more powerful at sucking up carbon than forests. Carbon is stored in meadow roots. It does not disappear if the leaves are damaged as it is with trees. When forests burn or are harvested they do not absorb carbon. Trees store carbon in their canopies where meadows store carbon in their roots.

In so far as growth rate, a forest takes generations to grow,

while it takes only 8 years to change degraded land into grasslands. New meadows we can create  and absorb the same carbon that established grasslands do.  This meadow below is 1 year old.

Scientist are in a hurry to develop an off- the-shelf seed that matches the sturdy seeds they have found.  The clock is ticking though.  It’s tough to stop the construction of a new data center as described above and prevent the ’rounding up’ of valuable grasslands that may lie in the way of a destructive ‘planting’ of cement and black top.

There is a way you can help reduce carbon pollution in small way. Just plant a small area of meadow or let a small area in you yard turn to seed and become a meadow.  Perfect green lawns are pretty but do nothing for the atmosphere.

Do you think that if we let grasses grow along roads, in parts of lawns and around data centers…that we could make a big dent in mitigating the pollution we make?  I’d like to think so.

Christie lives in Manakin Sabot , Virginia where she manages a 3 acre garden. Her blogs are written from her 35 years as a personal and professional gardener.