LONDON – Fast-growing trees are dying small and are at risk of releasing carbon dioxide that challenges forecasts that will be a “sink” for forest-planet-temperature emissions, scientists said Tuesday.
The cover absorbs a significant amount of carbon dioxide which is emitted by burning fossil fuels and plays a crucial role in estimating our ability to fight CO2 levels.
Researchers say that in the current climate expectation, Dello expects forests to continue to act as a carbon sink in this century, with high temperatures and concentrations of CO2, thought to stimulate tree growth and therefore help them absorb more carbon as they mature faster. .
But, in a study led by the University of Leeds in England and published in the journal Nature Communications, they warned that this rapid growth is also linked to small dead trees – suggesting an increase in the role of forests as carbon storage could be “short-term”. .
Researchers examined more than 200,000 tree-ring records of tree species worldwide and found that the trade-off between growth and life span is almost the same in all tropical trees.
In a statement from Leeds University, Steve Walker, co-author of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, said the society has benefited from the growing potential of forests in recent decades.
But these CO2 rates are likely to accelerate as slow-growing and persistent trees are overgrown by fast-growing but sensitive trees.
“Like the story of the tortoise and the rabbit, our findings suggest that there are adjectives within fast-growing trees that weaken them, while there are characteristics of slow-growing trees that allow them to continue,” he said.
The researchers said the findings suggest that trees reach their maximum possible size so the chances of dying increase dramatically.
But they said it could also be that fast-growing trees invest less in defense against diseases or pest attacks or suffer from drought.
Earth’s average temperature has risen just over one degree Celsius from pre-industrial industrial levels, becoming more destructive by rising seas enough to increase the intensity of droughts, heatwaves and superstorms.
Submerged or source?
Commenting on the study, David Lee, a professor of meteorology at Manchester Metropolitan University in England, said that the Earth’s system climate models currently predict the continuation or increase of forest carbon sequestration.
“The study shows the opposite, that increased CO2 compromises with forests as a carbon sink,” he said.
He suggested that “planting fossil fuel-based emissions (or avoiding deforestation) could not really be a ‘stand for scientific scrutiny’.
But Keith Kirby, a woodland ecologist at Oxford University, said forests don’t necessarily create the opposite of their carbon role.
“We cannot rely too much on increased growth in the unit area to maintain and increase the potential for one-to-one carbon sinks, but this can be offset by slowing down deforestation and increasing deforestation, where this can happen in a sustainable way.” He said.
Global forests – and especially tropical – planet-warming CO2 soak in 25 to 30 percent of humanity’s atmosphere.
Last year, about 38,000 square kilometers (14,500 square miles) of primary, old-growing trees were destroyed every six seconds, according to Global Forest and Watch.
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