Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and Amazonian tropical forests.

ABSTRACT: Structurally intact tropical forests sequestered about half of the global terrestrial carbon uptake over the 1990s and early 2000s, removing about 15 per cent of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions^1-3. Climate-driven vegetation models typically predict that this tropical forest 'carbon sink' will continue for decades^4,5. Here we assess trends in the carbon sink using 244 structurally intact African tropical forests spanning 11 countries, compare them with 321 published plots from Amazonia and investigate the underlying drivers of the trends. The carbon sink in live aboveground biomass in intact African tropical forests has been stable for the three decades to 2015, at 0.66 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year (95 per cent confidence interval 0.53-0.79), in contras

SUBMITTER: Hubau W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7617213 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature