Despite deforestation, the world is getting greener – scientists
By By Alisa Tang | Reuters – 5 hours ago
BANGKOK – The world’s vegetation has expanded, adding nearly 4 billion tonnes of carbon to plants above ground in the decade since 2003, thanks to tree-planting in China, forest regrowth in former Soviet states and more lush savannas due to higher rainfall.
Scientists analysed 20 years of satellite data and found the increase in carbon, despite ongoing large-scale tropical deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, according to research published on Monday in Nature Climate Change.
Carbon flows between the world’s oceans, air and land. It is present in the atmosphere primarily as carbon dioxide (CO2) – the main climate-changing gas – and stored as carbon in trees.
Through photosynthesis, trees convert carbon dioxide into the food they need to grow, locking the carbon in their wood.
The 4-billion-tonne increase is minuscule compared to the 60 billion tonnes of carbon released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and cement production over the same period, said Yi Liu, the study’s lead author and a scientist at the University of New South Wales.
“From this research, we can see these plants can help absorb some carbon dioxide, but there’s still a lot of carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere,” Liu said by telephone from Sydney.
“If we want to stabilise the current level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere – and avoid the consequent impacts – it still requires us to reduce fossil fuel emissions.”
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