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@maugendre@mas.to
2026-08-16 09:15 UTC
"Earth’s forests reached a tipping point. They had grown dense, lush canopies at the start of one of Earth’s most intense episodes of greenhouse warming. But those canopies began to thin."
"The structure of a forest – and importantly its canopy – controls the amount of light that reaches the forest floor, the temperature, water habitat and amount of carbon the forest can store, making it one of the clearest indicators of ecosystem function."
"Forest canopies opened, exposing the ground to more sunlight and altering the movement of water through the landscape."
"As temperatures climbed, heat and drought overwhelmed the benefits of higher carbon dioxide levels. The canopy rapidly thinned as trees died, and it remained much thinner for over 100,000 years."
"Ancient soils gave way to coarser river deposits".
Regan E. Dunn writes: https://theconversation.com/ancient-forests-took-100-000-years-to-recover-from-the-last-global-warming-period-similar-to-today-wyoming-fossils-reveal-what-happened-289462
#forests #ecology #climateChange #degradation #droughts #deforestation #forest #carbon #carbonSinks #carbonSink #footprint #soil
Replies (1)
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"We quantify the aboveground carbon sink of recovering forests across three main continuous tropical humid regions: the Amazon, Borneo and Central Africa. On the basis of satellite data products, our analysis encompasses the heterogeneous spatial and temporal patterns of growth in degraded and secondary forests, influenced by key environmental and anthropogenic drivers. In the first 20 years of recovery, regrowth rates in Borneo were up to 45% and 58% higher than in Central Africa and the Amazon, respectively. This is due to variables such as temperature, water deficit and disturbance regimes. We find that regrowing degraded and secondary forests accumulated 107 Tg C year−1 between 1984 and 2018, counterbalancing 26% of carbon emissions from humid tropical forest loss during the same period. Protecting old-growth forests is therefore a priority."
"The carbon sink of secondary and degraded humid tropical forests" (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05679-w
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#tropics #forests #carbon #ecology #CDR
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