Forest restoration project in New Territories, Hong Kong Photo: Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Gardens

A new way to identify land for forest restoration

25 February 2022

Currently, most estimates of the potential of tropical forests as a carbon sequestration mechanism are based on present-day climate and do not take into account potential impacts from future climate change and rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations.

Forest restoration projects are also vulnerable to impacts from climate change. Rising temperatures, drought, insect outbreaks and increases in wildfire threaten the success of these projects and their aim to store carbon in biomass and soils over the entire project lifetime of 50 to over 100 years, that is, permanently.

Failure of the restoration process can lead to habitat loss, financial loss, and may result in additional carbon emission. To investigate the risk of climate change to tropical forest restoration, scientists from the University of Hong Kong performed 221 simulations with a dynamic global vegetation model driven by a range of future climate scenarios.

The results showed that carbon in restored tropical forests is largely preserved under the entire range of potential future climates. The research also points towards ways to identify land areas most suitable for forest restoration.

The research was published in Nature Climate Change.

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