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One of the claimed multifunctional characteristics of degraded pastoral landscapes is their ability to sequester carbon in woody biomass. But what is the actual potential for this, and at what rate may this occur over time? Due to slow growth rates, intermittent droughts, and heterogeneous landscapes, it may require many years of data collection from across multiple site locations to answer such questions. For a n arid calcareous landscape in central Australia that had been degraded through overgrazing by ca ttle and rabbits, we used multiple, disparate, data sources to estimate change in above-ground woody biomass over 40 years. From a very low density of live trees and shrubs in 1981, regeneration occurred in 1-ha plots when protected from grazing by rabbits and large herbivores ('rabbit-exclosed'). There was lesser regeneration in adjacent plots that excluded only cattle grazing ('cattle-exclosed') and minimal establishment in control plots that were grazed. Hyper-spatial satellite images available from Goog le Earth were classified to estimate multi-temporal woody canopy cover for each plot between 2004 and 2023. Plot-based above-ground biomass (AGB, dry weight) of live trees and shrubs was estimated from the density and cover data using allometric functions from studies conducted elsewhere. Finally, AGB was accurately estimated in all plots in late 2022 using ground-based allometry data. AGB increased by 1.92 tonnes / ha within the rabbit-exclosed plots between 1981 and 2022, with lesser increases on the cattle-exclosed and control plots (0.69 and 0.63 tonnes / ha, respectively). Although maximum AGB after 40 years was still small (1.97±0.3 03 tonnes / ha), separate analysis of satellite data has shown that woody canopy cover elsewhere in this recovering landscape has reached ~50%, equivalent to ~4 tonnes / ha AGB. Such woody thickening can potentially reduce herbage growth and adversely impact beef production, bringing to focus the multifunctional balance between pastoralism and carbon sequestration.