Woodland creation sequesters carbon and contributes to climate change mitigation. Most previous assessments of the carbon sequestration of new UK woodlands have focused on tree planting, little is known about the scale of the potential contribution from natural regeneration. We used a Potential for Native Woodland Model to make the first estimate of carbon sequestration by large-scale native woodland expansion through natural regeneration in Scotland. We estimate native woodland could expand to cover an additional 3.9 million hectares of the Scottish uplands removing an average of 6.96 million tons of CO₂ per year. This represents 35%–45% of the carbon removal target for UK woodlands that has been suggested by the UK Committee on Climate Change. Expanding woodlands to just 10% of this potential would double existing native woodland and could provide a multitude of benefits, including carbon removal equivalent to approximately 4% of this target. The next few decades are critical in terms of climate change mitigation, therefore further work is now required to improve these estimates and better constrain this potentially large contribution.

造林可以固碳并有助于减缓气候变化。大多数先前对英国新林地碳固存的评估都集中在植树上，对自然再生的潜在贡献规模知之甚少。我们使用原生林地潜力模型对苏格兰通过自然再生进行的大规模原生林地扩张所产生的碳固存量进行了首次估计。我们估计原生林地可以扩大到覆盖额外 390 万公顷的苏格兰高地，平均去除 696 万吨 CO ₂每年。这代表了英国气候变化委员会建议的英国林地碳去除目标的 35%–45%。将林地扩大到这一潜力的 10% 将使现有的原生林地增加一倍，并可以提供多种好处，包括相当于该目标约 4% 的碳去除。未来几十年在减缓气候变化方面至关重要，因此现在需要进一步的工作来改进这些估计并更好地限制这一潜在的巨大贡献。