Tropical vegetation benefits less from elevated atmospheric CO2 than previously thought
New study has important implications for climate change mitigation strategies 5 May 2022 Sequestration of carbon from the atmosphere into tropical vegetation has been suggested as a mitigating factor of anthropogenically elevated atmospheric CO2 levels. A new study, led by Dr William Gosling from the University of Amsterdam, now shows that over the long-term there is actually a stronger role for moisture change than for atmospheric CO2 in determining tropical woody vegetation change. The research findings have large implications for developing effective climate mitigation strategies and are now published in 'Science'. Tropical vegetation forms an important part of the global carbon cycle as it contributes substantially to the global net primary productivity and through this sequesters large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Previous research on individual plants, or forest patches, suggested that tropical vegetation could be a mitigating factor of anthropogenically elevated atmospheric CO2 levels: i.e. when more CO2 is released into the atmosphere, the vegetation will absorb more CO2 and thereby reduce the impact of this greenhouse gas. Landscape scale. The newly published study in Science , led by Dr William Gosling from the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics at the University of Amsterdam, for the first time scaled up to allow tropical vegetation change at the landscape scale and over timescales relevant to ecosystem change to be considered.
