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Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening
The growth of the global terrestrial sink of carbon dioxide has puzzled scientists for decades. We propose that the role of land management practices—from intensive forestry to allowing passive afforestation of abandoned lands—have played a major role in the growth of the terrestrial carbon sink in...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
John Wiley and Sons Inc.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540515/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32816359 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15292 |
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author | Kauppi, Pekka E. Ciais, Philippe Högberg, Peter Nordin, Annika Lappi, Juha Lundmark, Tomas Wernick, Iddo K. |
author_facet | Kauppi, Pekka E. Ciais, Philippe Högberg, Peter Nordin, Annika Lappi, Juha Lundmark, Tomas Wernick, Iddo K. |
author_sort | Kauppi, Pekka E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The growth of the global terrestrial sink of carbon dioxide has puzzled scientists for decades. We propose that the role of land management practices—from intensive forestry to allowing passive afforestation of abandoned lands—have played a major role in the growth of the terrestrial carbon sink in the decades since the mid twentieth century. The Forest Transition, a historic transition from shrinking to expanding forests, and from sparser to denser forests, has seen an increase of biomass and carbon across large regions of the globe. We propose that the contribution of Forest Transitions to the terrestrial carbon sink has been underestimated. Because forest growth is slow and incremental, changes in the carbon density in forest biomass and soils often elude detection. Measurement technologies that rely on changes in two‐dimensional ground cover can miss changes in forest density. In contrast, changes from abrupt and total losses of biomass in land clearing, forest fires and clear cuts are easy to measure. Land management improves over time providing important present contributions and future potential to climate change mitigation. Appreciating the contributions of Forest Transitions to the sequestering of atmospheric carbon will enable its potential to aid in climate change mitigation. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7540515 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-75405152020-10-09 Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening Kauppi, Pekka E. Ciais, Philippe Högberg, Peter Nordin, Annika Lappi, Juha Lundmark, Tomas Wernick, Iddo K. Glob Chang Biol Opinion The growth of the global terrestrial sink of carbon dioxide has puzzled scientists for decades. We propose that the role of land management practices—from intensive forestry to allowing passive afforestation of abandoned lands—have played a major role in the growth of the terrestrial carbon sink in the decades since the mid twentieth century. The Forest Transition, a historic transition from shrinking to expanding forests, and from sparser to denser forests, has seen an increase of biomass and carbon across large regions of the globe. We propose that the contribution of Forest Transitions to the terrestrial carbon sink has been underestimated. Because forest growth is slow and incremental, changes in the carbon density in forest biomass and soils often elude detection. Measurement technologies that rely on changes in two‐dimensional ground cover can miss changes in forest density. In contrast, changes from abrupt and total losses of biomass in land clearing, forest fires and clear cuts are easy to measure. Land management improves over time providing important present contributions and future potential to climate change mitigation. Appreciating the contributions of Forest Transitions to the sequestering of atmospheric carbon will enable its potential to aid in climate change mitigation. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-08-20 2020-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7540515/ /pubmed/32816359 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15292 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Global Change Biology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Opinion Kauppi, Pekka E. Ciais, Philippe Högberg, Peter Nordin, Annika Lappi, Juha Lundmark, Tomas Wernick, Iddo K. Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening |
title | Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening |
title_full | Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening |
title_fullStr | Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening |
title_full_unstemmed | Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening |
title_short | Carbon benefits from Forest Transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening |
title_sort | carbon benefits from forest transitions promoting biomass expansions and thickening |
topic | Opinion |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7540515/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32816359 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15292 |
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