Publication Date:
1998-10-17
Description:
The role of the world's forests as a "sink" for atmospheric carbon dioxide is the subject of active debate. Long-term monitoring of plots in mature humid tropical forests concentrated in South America revealed that biomass gain by tree growth exceeded losses from tree death in 38 of 50 Neotropical sites. These forest plots have accumulated 0.71 ton, plus or minus 0.34 ton, of carbon per hectare per year in recent decades. The data suggest that Neotropical forests may be a significant carbon sink, reducing the rate of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Phillips -- Malhi -- Higuchi -- Laurance -- Nunez -- Vasquez -- Ferreira -- Stern -- Brown -- Grace -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 1998 Oct 16;282(5388):439-42.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉O. L. Phillips, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK. Y. Malhi and J. Grace, Institute of Ecology and Resource Management, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, EH9 3JU, UK. N. Higuchi, Departamento de Silvicultura Tropical.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9774263" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
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Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
