Degradation in carbon stocks near tropical forest edges.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 26679749.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms10158 and PMC identifier 4703854.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Carbon stock estimates based on land cover type are critical for informing climate change assessment and landscape management, but field and theoretical evidence indicates that forest fragmentation reduces the amount of carbon stored at forest edges. Here, using remotely sensed pantropical biomass and land cover data sets, we estimate that biomass within the first 500 m of the forest edge is on average 25% lower than in forest interiors and that reductions of 10% extend to 1.5 km from the forest edge. These findings suggest that IPCC Tier 1 methods overestimate carbon stocks in tropical forests by nearly 10%. Proper accounting for degradation at forest edges will inform better landscape and forest management and policies, as well as the assessment of carbon stocks at landscape and national levels.
Medical subject headings
- Biomass
- Carbon
- Forests
- Tropical Climate