One approach to help fight climate change is to protect natural forests, as they absorb some atmospheric carbon released by burning fossil fuels and store large volumes of carbon.
Our new research on Australia’s tropical rainforests challenges the assumption that they will keep absorbing more carbon than they release.
We found that as climate change has intensified over the past half-century, less and less carbon has been taken up and converted to wood in the stems and branches of the trees in these forests. Woody biomass is a large and relatively stable store of carbon in forests, and acts as an important indicator of overall forest health.
