Degradation and forgone removals increase the carbon impact of intact forest loss by 626%

Sean L. Maxwell, Tom Evans, James E.M. Watson, Alexandra Morel, Hedley Grantham, Adam Duncan, Nancy Harris, Peter Potapov, Rebecca K. Runting, Oscar Venter, Stephanie Wang, Yadvinder Malhi

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    107 Citations (Scopus)
    125 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Intact tropical forests, free from substantial anthropogenic influence, store and sequester large amounts of atmospheric carbon but are currently neglected in international climate policy. We show that between 2000 and 2013, direct clearance of intact tropical forest areas accounted for 3.2% of gross carbon emissions from all deforestation across the pantropics. However, full carbon accounting requires the consideration of forgone carbon sequestration, selective logging, edge effects, and defaunation. When these factors were considered, the net carbon impact resulting from intact tropical forest loss between 2000 and 2013 increased by a factor of 6 (626%), from 0.34 (0.37 to 0.21) to 2.12 (2.85 to 1.00) petagrams of carbon (equivalent to approximately 2 years of global land use change emissions). The climate mitigation value of conserving the 549 million ha of tropical forest that remains intact is therefore significant but will soon dwindle if their rate of loss continues to accelerate.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbereaax2546
    Number of pages10
    JournalScience Advances
    Volume5
    Issue number10
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 30 Oct 2019

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)
    • General

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