Germany's Dying Forests Are Losing Their Ability To Absorb CO2

Germany's Harz mountains, once known for their verdant spruce forests, have become a graveyard of skeletal trunks after a bark beetle outbreak ravaged the region starting in 2018 -- an infestation made possible by successive droughts and heatwaves that fatally weakened the trees. Between 2018 and 2021, Germany lost half a million hectares of forest, nearly 5% of the country's total.
Since 2010, EU land carbon absorption has declined by a third, and Germany is now almost certain to miss its carbo