Journal article
Mature Andean forests as globally important carbon sinks and future carbon refuges
- Abstract:
- It is largely unknown how South America’s Andean forests affect the global carbon cycle, and thus regulate climate change. Here, we measure aboveground carbon dynamics over the past two decades in 119 monitoring plots spanning a range of >3000 m elevation across the subtropical and tropical Andes. Our results show that Andean forests act as strong sinks for aboveground carbon (0.67 ± 0.08 Mg C ha−1 y−1) and have a high potential to serve as future carbon refuges. Aboveground carbon dynamics of Andean forests are driven by abiotic and biotic factors, such as climate and size-dependent mortality of trees. The increasing aboveground carbon stocks offset the estimated C emissions due to deforestation between 2003 and 2014, resulting in a net total uptake of 0.027 Pg C y−1. Reducing deforestation will increase Andean aboveground carbon stocks, facilitate upward species migrations, and allow for recovery of biomass losses due to climate change.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-021-22459-8
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 2138
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2021-04-09
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-03-17
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2041-1723
- Pmid:
-
33837222
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
-
1171353
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1171353
- Deposit date:
-
2023-10-31
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Duque et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Notes:
- A correction to this article is available online from Springer Nature at: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23955-7
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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