Unexpectedly large impact of forest management and grazing on global vegetation biomass

Karl Heinz Erb, Thomas Kastner, Christopher Plutzar, A.L. Bais-Moleman, Nuno Carvalhais, Tamara Fetzel, Simone Gingrich, Helmut Haberl, Christian Lauk, Maria Niedertscheider, Julia Pongratz, Martin Thurner, S. Luyssaert

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    Abstract

    Carbon stocks in vegetation have a key role in the climate system. However, the magnitude, patterns and uncertainties of carbon stocks and the effect of land use on the stocks remain poorly quantified. Here we show, using state-of-the-art datasets, that vegetation currently stores around 450 petagrams of carbon. In the hypothetical absence of land use, potential vegetation would store around 916 petagrams of carbon, under current climate conditions. This difference highlights the massive effect of land use on biomass stocks. Deforestation and other land-cover changes are responsible for 53-58% of the difference between current and potential biomass stocks. Land management effects (the biomass stock changes induced by land use within the same land cover) contribute 42-47%, but have been underestimated in the literature. Therefore, avoiding deforestation is necessary but not sufficient for mitigation of climate change. Our results imply that trade-offs exist between conserving carbon stocks on managed land and raising the contribution of biomass to raw material and energy supply for the mitigation of climate change. Efforts to raise biomass stocks are currently verifiable only in temperate forests, where their potential is limited. By contrast, large uncertainties hinder verification in the tropical forest, where the largest potential is located, pointing to challenges for the upcoming stocktaking exercises under the Paris agreement.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)73-76
    Number of pages4
    JournalNature
    Volume553
    Issue number7686
    Early online date20 Dec 2017
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 4 Jan 2018

    Funding

    Acknowledgements Funding from the European Research Council (ERC-2010-stg-263522 \u2018LUISE\u2019), the European Commission (H2020-EO-2014-640176 \u2018BACI\u2019), the German Research Foundation\u2019s Emmy Noether Program (PO 1751/1-1), GlobBiomass project of the European Space Agency (4000113100/14/I-NB), the NOVA grant UID/AMB/04085/2013, the Amsterdam Academic Alliance (AAA) and the Vetenskapsr\u00E5det grant 621-2014-4266 of the Swedish Research Council are acknowledged. We thank A. Baccini, A. S. Ruesch, S. Saatchi and P. C. West for making their data layers publicly available. K.H.-E. is grateful for the support by K. Kowalski. This research contributes to the Global Land Programme (https://glp.earth/).

    FundersFunder number
    Horizon 2020 Framework Programme640176
    European CommissionH2020-EO-2014-640176
    European Research CouncilERC-2010-stg-263522
    European Space Agency4000113100/14/I-NB
    Deutsche ForschungsgemeinschaftPO 1751/1-1
    Vetenskapsrådet621-2014-4266
    Nederlandse Onderzoekschool Voor AstronomieUID/AMB/04085/2013

      Keywords

      • Journal Article

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