CIFOR-ICRAF aborda retos y oportunidades locales y, al mismo tiempo, ofrece soluciones a los problemas globales relacionados con los bosques, los paisajes, las personas y el planeta.

Aportamos evidencia empírica y soluciones prácticas para transformar el uso de la tierra y la producción de alimentos: conservando y restaurando ecosistemas, respondiendo a las crisis globales del clima, la malnutrición, la pérdida de biodiversidad y la desertificación. En resumen, mejorando la vida de las personas.

CIFOR-ICRAF produce cada año más de 750 publicaciones sobre agroforestería, bosques y cambio climático, restauración de paisajes, derechos, políticas forestales y mucho más, y en varios idiomas. .

CIFOR-ICRAF aborda retos y oportunidades locales y, al mismo tiempo, ofrece soluciones a los problemas globales relacionados con los bosques, los paisajes, las personas y el planeta.

Aportamos evidencia empírica y soluciones prácticas para transformar el uso de la tierra y la producción de alimentos: conservando y restaurando ecosistemas, respondiendo a las crisis globales del clima, la malnutrición, la pérdida de biodiversidad y la desertificación. En resumen, mejorando la vida de las personas.

CIFOR–ICRAF publishes over 750 publications every year on agroforestry, forests and climate change, landscape restoration, rights, forest policy and much more – in multiple languages.

CIFOR–ICRAF addresses local challenges and opportunities while providing solutions to global problems for forests, landscapes, people and the planet.

We deliver actionable evidence and solutions to transform how land is used and how food is produced: conserving and restoring ecosystems, responding to the global climate, malnutrition, biodiversity and desertification crises. In short, improving people’s lives.

The persistence of carbon in the African forest understory

Exportar la cita

Quantifying carbon dynamics in forests is critical for understanding their role in long-term climate regulation. Yet little is known about tree longevity in tropical forests, a factor that is vital for estimating carbon persistence. Here we calculate mean carbon age (the period that carbon is fixed in trees7) in different strata of African tropical forests using (1) growth-ring records with a unique timestamp accurately demarcating 66 years of growth in one site and (2) measurements of diameter increments from the African Tropical Rainforest Observation Network (23 sites). We find that in spite of their much smaller size, in understory trees mean carbon age (74 years) is greater than in sub-canopy (54 years) and canopy (57 years) trees and similar to carbon age in emergent trees (66 years). The remarkable carbon longevity in the understory results from slow and aperiodic growth as an adaptation to limited resource availability. Our analysis also reveals that while the understory represents a small share (11%) of the carbon stock, it contributes disproportionally to the forest carbon sink (20%). We conclude that accounting for the diversity of carbon age and carbon sequestration among different forest strata is critical for effective conservation management and for accurate modelling of carbon cycling.
Download:

DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-018-0316-5
Puntuación Altmetric:
Dimensiones Recuento de citas:

Publicaciones relacionadas