A Large and Persistent Carbon Sink in the World’s Forests
Abstract
The terrestrial carbon sink has been large in recent decades, but its size and location remain uncertain. Using forest inventory data and long-term ecosystem carbon studies, we estimate a total forest sink of 2.4 ± 0.4 petagrams of carbon per year (Pg C year–1) globally for 1990 to 2007. We also estimate a source of 1.3 ± 0.7 Pg C year–1 from tropical land-use change, consisting of a gross tropical deforestation emission of 2.9 ± 0.5 Pg C year–1 partially compensated by a carbon sink in tropical forest regrowth of 1.6 ± 0.5 Pg C year–1. Together, the fluxes comprise a net global forest sink of 1.1 ± 0.8 Pg C year–1, with tropical estimates having the largest uncertainties. Our total forest sink estimate is equivalent in magnitude to the terrestrial sink deduced from fossil fuel emissions and land-use change sources minus ocean and atmospheric sinks.
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Reference and Notes
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Science
Volume 333 | Issue 6045
19 August 2011
19 August 2011
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Copyright © 2011, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Submission history
Received: 13 December 2010
Accepted: 29 June 2011
Published in print: 19 August 2011
Acknowledgments
Acknowledgments: This study is the major output of two workshops at Peking Univ. and Princeton Univ. Y.P., R.A.B., and J.F. were lead authors and workshop organizers; Y.P., R.A.B., J.F., R.H., P.E.K., W.A.K., O.L.P., A.S., and S.L.L. contributed primary data sets and analyses; J.G.C., P.C., R.B.J., and S.W.P. contributed noteworthy ideas to improve the study; A.D.M., S.P., A.R., S.S., and D.H. provided results of modeling or data analysis relevant to the study; and all authors contributed in writing, discussions, or comments. We thank K. McCullough for helping to make the map in Fig. 1 and C. Wayson for helping to develop a Monte-Carlo analysis. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Forest Service, NASA (grant 31021001), the National Basic Research Program of China on Global Change (2010CB50600), the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Peking Univ., and Princeton Univ. This work is a contribution toward the Global Carbon Project’s aim of fostering an international framework to study the global carbon cycle.
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Unsung forest carbon sequestered by animal sowers
Forests have been widely acknowledged as one of the largest carbon pools in terrestrial ecosystem [1-3], forest carbon sinks have been widely used to deal with climate change [4]. Therefore, maintenance of forest carbon sink and stability is of great significance to achieve the goal of 'carbon peak and carbon neutrality' [5,6].
As the key animal sowers in forests, however, the important ecological role of vertebrate seed dispersers and/or seed predators in carbon sequestration in forests has been unanimously underestimated or even ignored although they actively participate in efficient seed removal, long-distance dispersal, seedling establishment and community structure via natural regeneration [7]. Despite the evidence suggesting that recruitment of many large trees that depend animal sowers for seed dispersal and regeneration has tremendous contributions to carbon stock of forests [8,9], how to account for carbon sink size depends heavily on the ecological services that animal sowers can provide and their dual role to influence forest communities either through mutualistic (seed dispersers) or antagonistic (seed predators) interactions with large-seeded hardwood plant species contributed to carbon stock. Till now, most of the roads have not yet reached accurate assessment of the effects of animal sowers on carbon storage and neutrality [10], mainly because carbon uptake process in the forest mediated by animal sowers is quite dynamics and typically requires long cycles.
Given that animal sowers have long-term consequences for tree species composition and then on carbon sequestration of forests [11], the potential to sustain the carbon sink should have been highlighted based on well exploring their functional traits and ecological effects on natural regeneration of forests. Animal sowers may function to sequester or release carbon depending on dispersal effectiveness altered by forest type, structure and management practice, therefore, we call for more efforts to develop theoretical models to size up forest carbon sink persistence mediated by animal sowers through seed dispersal mutualistic networks and in a dynamic perspective of seed production, seed predation, seed dispersal, seedling recruitment and tree growth.
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