There’s an interesting comment piece in the current issue of New Scientist, which highlights the importance of grasslands as an important contributor to combating global warming. This is something I’d not fully considered before.

As usual the TL;DR summary quotes (especially as New Scientist is paywalled).

Permanent grasslands hold about a third of Earth’s terrestrial carbon … More grasslands, and especially more biodiverse ones, means more natural carbon storage.
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The past 100 years has seen this terrain destroyed on a terrifying scale. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the UK alone has lost at least 97 per cent of its meadows. Tall grass prairie in the US once covered 170 million acres, less than 4 per cent of which survives.
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Grasslands are seen as empty spaces. They are there to be ploughed and sown and built on. T heir destruction isn’t met with the same angst as deforestation.
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While we are all familiar with the idea of forests as Earth’s “lungs”, reforestation isn’t the sole or simple solution to the problems we face
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Even small mown and grazed meadows contain a greater diversity of flora and fauna than equivalent areas of forest … At either extreme of grassland management – mown short or left long – there are species that thrive.
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Grasslands can provide an ideal environment for us to enjoy as places to eat, work and play in nature, while also providing the essential functions of carbon sequestration and oxygen-releasing photosynthesis.

Think on …