Tropical forests as drivers of lake carbon burial.
other
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 35831284.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-022-31258-8 and PMC identifier 9279284.
- 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
A significant proportion of carbon (C) captured by terrestrial primary production is buried in lacustrine ecosystems, which have been substantially affected by anthropogenic activities globally. However, there is a scarcity of sedimentary organic carbon (OC) accumulation information for lakes surrounded by highly productive rainforests at warm tropical latitudes, or in response to land cover and climate change. Here, we combine new data from intensive campaigns spanning 13 lakes across remote Amazonian regions with a broad literature compilation, to produce the first spatially-weighted global analysis of recent OC burial in lakes (over ~50-100-years) that integrates both biome type and forest cover. We find that humid tropical forest lake sediments are a disproportionately important global OC sink of ~80 Tg C yr<sup>-1</sup> with implications for climate change. Further, we demonstrate that temperature and forest conservation are key factors in maintaining massive organic carbon pools in tropical lacustrine sediments.
Medical subject headings
- Carbon
- Lakes