How can the earth’s vegetation and biota be used to help offset already high atmospheric CO2 levels in order to minimize or mitigate the effects of climate change on the biosphere?

Because Earth’s climate is already changing, and regardless of how policy changes human inputs of CO2, we are going to lose biodiversity if we do not start to understand how we can used biodiversity to mitigate high atmospheric CO2. We already have examples of the use of forests and tree planting to bank carbon. However, a large component of biota occurs in grasslands and earlier successional systems which are not being promoted as potential carbon banks. If we procede to approach the climate change issue with just planting trees we will end up losing those biota that cannot live in forests.

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