Satellite observations show that 24.1% of tropical moist forests are degraded. In addition to the warming effects of the release of carbon from biomass, satellite data suggest that degradation could also increase the land surface temperatures of the affected regions. This biophysical feedback could hinder forest restoration initiatives.
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References
Matricardi, E. A. T. et al. Long-term forest degradation surpasses deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Science 369, 1378–1382 (2020). This paper reports the area of forest that was degraded in the Brazilian Amazon from 1992 to 2014.
Qin, Y. et al. Carbon loss from forest degradation exceeds that from deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Nat. Clim. Change 11, 442–448 (2021). This paper uses vegetation optical depth data to calculate the carbon released to the atmosphere owing to forest degradation in the Brazilian Amazon.
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Santoro, M. et al. The global forest above-ground biomass pool for 2010 estimated from high-resolution satellite observations. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 13, 3927–3950 (2021). A paper that describes the high-resolution global biomass dataset generated from satellite observations of synthetic aperture radar backscatter around 2010.
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This is a summary of: Zhu, L. et al. Comparable biophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks on warming from tropical moist forest degradation. Nat. Geosci. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01137-y (2023).
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The hidden warming effects of the degradation of tropical moist forests. Nat. Geosci. 16, 200–201 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01139-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01139-w
