Forest restoration schemes should prioritise restoring native forests for greatest climate and environmental benefits, but these benefits incur a trade-off with wood production in comparison with tree plantations.
Forest restoration schemes should prioritise restoring native forests for greatest climate and environmental benefits, but these benefits incur a trade-off with wood production in comparison with tree plantations.
Diverse native forests store more above-ground carbon, provide more water to nearby streams, and better support biodiversity and prevent soil erosion than simple tree plantations, a major new study published today in Science has found – but plantations have an advantage in wood production.
The study looked at the relative benefits of restoring native forests versus establishing a range of simple tree plantations in terms of biodiversity conservation and four key functions of value to humans - or ‘ecosystem services’ - provided by a forest: carbon storage, soil erosion control, water provisioning, and wood production.
Forest restoration is gathering pace worldwide, in part as a way to tackle climate change: deforestation is a major source of carbon emissions, and forest restoration can be a ‘nature-based climate solution’ to counter global warming. In many cases, forest restoration is also conducted for the water provisioning and flood regulation functions of forests, and as a means to prevent soil erosion and produce wood products.
Read more at University of Cambridge
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