Wood Vaulting – Dumbest Climate Geo-engineering Idea Ever?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Imagine harvesting millions, billions of tons of wood, and not even burning it, let alone using it for construction.

Scientists Think We Could Slow Climate Change by Sinking Trees in the Arctic Ocean

Purposefully sinking boreal trees could help lock away carbon for millennia or longer, but the audacious plan comes with risks of its own.

BY DARREN ORF PUBLISHED: JAN 28, 2026 8:30 AM EST

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“There is now a forest that is sequestering lots of carbon, but now the next thing is how to store it in a way that won’t get burned,” Ulf Büntgen, the lead author of the study from the University of Cambridge, told New Scientist.

This is the basic idea behind a well-known carbon removal technique known as “wood vaulting,” which involves burying woody biomass in anaerobic (clay-rich) pits that essentially lock carbon underground. The authors note that while this method might be effective in theory, it’d likely rely on a 25 percent increase in logging and could negatively impact soil quality, mycorrhizal networks, and biodiversity loss—not to mention the increased emissions from deforestation, transportation, excavation, and vault construction. So, the authors looked for other, readily available anoxic environments with lower environmental impacts.

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Last year, Büntgen took part in a study that found wood survived without rotting for 8,000 years in low-oxygen Alpine lakes, and the idea of similarly vaulting wood in the Arctic does come with a few advantages. For one, afforestation is reducing albedo. And for another, these forests can be far removed from human-occupied spaces, but close to major river systems for easy transportation. The authors highlight the Ob, Yenisey, Lena, Yukon, and Mackenzie rivers in Russia, Alaska, and Canada as having the potential to be boreal timber waterways for vaulting logs in the Arctic Ocean. According to New Scientist, if 30,000 square kilometers could be logged along these rivers each year and then replanted, one billion tonnes of CO₂ could be stored. 

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Read more: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a70098782/sinking-1-billion-trees/

The abstract of the study;

No Long-Term Decay in α-Cellulose of Living and Relict Trees From the European Alps Over the Past 8,000 years

Tito Arosio, Ulf Büntgen, Matthias Saurer, Tatiana Bebchuk, Kurt Nicolussi, Agata Buchwal, Valentina Vitali, Markus Leuenberger

First published: 26 September 2025

https://doi.org/10.1029/2025PA005170Digital Object Identifier (DOI) VIEW METRICS

Abstract

Tree-ring α-cellulose stable isotopes of living trees and dead woods are increasingly used for high-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions spanning centuries to millennia. However, the potential effects of wood decay on α-cellulose content (CC) and the composition of tree-ring stable isotopes remain largely unexplored. Here, we present α-cellulose content measurements from relict and living trees in the European Alps spanning the past 8,000 years. This study addresses whether preservation context alters the isotopic integrity of α-cellulose. We assess the temporal stability of CC, its dependence on tree species, preservation conditions and wood type (subfossil, dry dead, living), as well as its relationship with α-cellulose stable carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen isotopes (δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O, δ²H). Our results show that α-cellulose remains stable over millennia under alpine conditions. Our results not only confirm the suitability of relict wood for tree-ring stable isotopic analysis and paleoclimate reconstructions, but also provide insights for the improvement of global carbon cycle models.

Read more: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025PA005170

Given emissions of around 35-40 gigatons of CO2 per year, 30,000 square kilometers x 40 = 1.2 million square kilometres of boreal forest would have to be harvested each year and sunk in the Arctic ocean.

Given the total area of Arctic boreal forest is only around 15-17 million square kilometers, and given boreal forests are not exactly fast growing, cancelling emissions would deplete all available boreal forest within 20 years.

Nutrient depletion in boreal regions from all the removed wood over time would turn the former forests into true ice deserts.

Of course, once they ran out of boreal forests, I mean you can’t shut down a green programme just because it wrecked the environment. They would then come for other forests.

Here’s a thought, instead of spending billions, maybe trillions of dollars per year chopping down the worlds’s forests, then pointlessly dumping all the trees in the Arctic Ocean, how about we just let the CO2 pile up in the atmosphere so it can fertilise our crops, and help keep our planet verdant and healthy?

This idea just affirms my theory of geo-engineering. No matter how crazy the latest geo-engineering proposal, there will always be someone who will come up with something even more nonsensical.