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Global covariation of forest age transitions with the net carbon balance
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Resumo(s)
Forest age transitions are critical in shaping the global carbon balance, yet their influence on carbon stocks and fluxes remains poorly quantified. Here we analyse global forest age dynamics from 2010 to 2020 using the Global Age Mapping Integration v2.0 dataset, alongside satellite-derived aboveground carbon (AGC) and atmospheric inversion-derived net CO2 flux data. We reveal widespread declines in forest age across the Amazon, Congo Basin, Southeast Asia and parts of Siberia, primarily driven by stand-replacing disturbances such as fire and harvest, leading to the replacement of older forests by younger stands. Meanwhile, forests in China, Europe and North America experienced net ageing. Globally, stand replacement resulted in substantial AGC losses, with old forests (>200 years, ~98.0 MgC ha−1) transitioning to younger, carbon-poor stands (<20 years, ~43.5 MgC ha−1), leading to a net AGC loss of ~0.14 PgC per year. Despite this, regions with high rates of young stands replacing old forests exhibited a temporary strengthening of the carbon sink, driven by the rapid regrowth of these young stands. Crucially, these young forests do not compensate for the long-term carbon storage of old forests. Our findings underscore the importance of protecting old forests while optimizing forest management strategies to maximize carbon gains and enhance climate mitigation.
Descrição
Funding Information: We thank the Global Land Monitoring group members at the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences for providing feedback on the presented results. We acknowledge funding support by the European Union through the FORWARDS ( https://forwards-project.eu/ ) and OpenEarthMonitor ( https://earthmonitor.org/ ) projects. V.H.A.H. acknowledges support from the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) MITIGATE+ project, the World Resources Institute (WRI) Land and Carbon Lab and the Open Earth Monitor Project funded by the European Union (grant agreement number 101059548). N.C and H.Y. acknowledge support by the Project Office BIOMASS (grant number 50EE1904) funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action. M.S. acknowledges the support of the European Space Agency (ESA) under contract number 4000123662/18/I-NB (Climate Change Initiative BIOMASS). We recognize the use of OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT and Grammarly AI tools to enhance the manuscript\u2019s sentence structure, conciseness and grammatical accuracy. Importantly, we emphasize that the conceptualization, research and results presented are entirely our own. Open access funding provided by GFZ Helmholtz-Zentrum für Geoforschung. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2025.
Palavras-chave
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology SDG 13 - Climate Action