Old Forests in the Tropics Are Getting Younger and Losing Carbon
By Kaja Šeruga, Eos/AGU.
Excerpt: The towering trees of old forests store massive amounts of carbon in their trunks, branches, and leaves. When these ancient giants are replaced by a younger cohort after logging, wildfire, or other disturbances, much of this carbon stock is lost. ...The resulting study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, measured the regional net aging of forests around the world across all age classes between 2010 and 2020, as well as the impact of these changes on aboveground carbon.
...On average, forests that are at least 200 years old store 77.8 tons of carbon per hectare, compared to 23.8 tons per hectare in the case of forests younger than 20 years old. The implications for carbon sequestration are more nuanced, however. Fast-growing young forests, for instance, can absorb carbon much more quickly than old ones, especially in the tropics, where the difference is 20-fold. But even this rate of sequestration is not enough to replace the old forests’ carbon stock....
...On average, forests that are at least 200 years old store 77.8 tons of carbon per hectare, compared to 23.8 tons per hectare in the case of forests younger than 20 years old. The implications for carbon sequestration are more nuanced, however. Fast-growing young forests, for instance, can absorb carbon much more quickly than old ones, especially in the tropics, where the difference is 20-fold. But even this rate of sequestration is not enough to replace the old forests’ carbon stock....