Natural lands play an important role in absorbing and sequestering carbon. While the U.S. land sector absorbs 10% of total U.S. carbon emissions, estimates show that cities, states, and businesses can scale the carbon absorbed by natural lands to 15% – the equivalent of 1 gigaton of carbon dioxide each year.

Non-federal actors can enhance the capacity for natural and working lands to foster carbon sequestration, thus reducing emissions in an agriculturally beneficial way. Deploying carbon-beneficial practices across U.S. forestlands, croplands, and grazing lands will require improved data, new monitoring systems, and scalable incentive mechanisms to elevate deployment.