long thought to be a carbon sink, the world’s tropical forests now release more carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere than they remove from it, thanks to their continued deforestation and degradation, warns a new study.
The study published in the journal Science, analysed the carbon density of woody live vegetation across tropical America, Africa and Asia for the period 2003 to 2014.
The researchers combined a comprehensive array of data, including carbon estimates from NASA, satellite imagery and field measurements.
The findings showed that carbon losses exceed gains on every continent, with the greatest losses, 60 per cent, occurring in the American tropics.
“The losses due to deforestation and degradation are actually emitting more CO2 to the atmosphere, compared with how much the existing forest is able to absorb,” the lead author of the study Alessandro Baccini of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts was quoted as saying by the Washington Post.
