Conservationists working to safeguard tropical forests often assume that old growth forests containing great stores of carbon also hold high biodiversity, but a new study finds that the relationship may not be as strong as once thought, according to a group of researchers with contributions from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and other organizations.
Tropical forests are exceptionally rich in both carbon and biodiversity, but the study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports indicates that, within the tropics, tree diversity and forest carbon do not necessarily correlate, and that there is no detectable relationship between the two factors across a region, a scale relevant for conservation planning and the establishment of protected areas. For instance, in Central Africa, some areas that are dominated by one or a few tree species are high in carbon density, whereas some forests with many more tree species have a lower carbon density.
Conservationists working to safeguard tropical forests often assume that old growth forests containing great stores of carbon also hold high biodiversity, but a new study finds that the relationship may not be as strong as once thought, according to a group of researchers with contributions from WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) and other organizations.
Tropical forests are exceptionally rich in both carbon and biodiversity, but the study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports indicates that, within the tropics, tree diversity and forest carbon do not necessarily correlate, and that there is no detectable relationship between the two factors across a region, a scale relevant for conservation planning and the establishment of protected areas. For instance, in Central Africa, some areas that are dominated by one or a few tree species are high in carbon density, whereas some forests with many more tree species have a lower carbon density.
The study titled “Diversity and carbon storage across the tropical forest biome” can be accessed here.
“The findings of the study show that there is not always a win-win situation whereby, when you conserve high-carbon forest stocks, you also automatically conserve high tree diversity,” said Miguel Leal, WCS scientist and a co-author on the study. “Forest carbon density maps are increasingly easy to create from remote-sensing data. If the high carbon density and high species diversity were invariably in the same places, we could easily pinpoint the areas important for conservation. That would make our work more efficient and save scarce resources, because biodiversity assessments are expensive and time consuming,”
Read more at Wildlife Conservation Society
Image Credits: Mleal001 via Wikimedia Commons
