Qie, L;
Lewis, SL;
Sullivan, MJP;
Lopez-Gonzalez, G;
Pickavance, GC;
Sunderland, T;
Ashton, P;
... Phillips, OL; + view all
(2017)
Long-term carbon sink in Borneo's forests halted by drought and vulnerable to edge effects.
Nature Communications
, 8
, Article 1966. 10.1038/s41467-017-01997-0.
Preview |
Text
s41467-017-01997-0.pdf - Published Version Download (2MB) | Preview |
Abstract
Less than half of anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions remain in the atmosphere. While carbon balance models imply large carbon uptake in tropical forests, direct on-the-ground observations are still lacking in Southeast Asia. Here, using long-term plot monitoring records of up to half a century, we find that intact forests in Borneo gained 0.43 Mg C ha−1 per year (95% CI 0.14–0.72, mean period 1988–2010) above-ground live biomass. These results closely match those from African and Amazonian plot networks, suggesting that the world’s remaining intact tropical forests are now en masse out-of-equilibrium. Although both pan-tropical and long-term, the sink in remaining intact forests appears vulnerable to climate and land use changes. Across Borneo the 1997–1998 El Niño drought temporarily halted the carbon sink by increasing tree mortality, while fragmentation persistently offset the sink and turned many edge-affected forests into a carbon source to the atmosphere.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Long-term carbon sink in Borneo's forests halted by drought and vulnerable to edge effects |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-017-01997-0 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01997-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author(s) 2017. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Climate-change ecology, Climate-change impacts, Forest ecology |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10041180 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
