CARBON CAPTURE BY FORESTS

CARBON CAPTURE BY FORESTS

TOPIC: Environment

Context- Conservationists have noted plantations outside forest don’t capture carbon efficiently or make up for biodiversity losses.

• Trees on forest edges may grow faster than those inside.

Concept-

Forests as Storehouses of carbon:

• The forest in the world that are major storehouses of carbon.
• In net, forests store more carbon dioxide than they release and an estimated 30% of carbon emissions from emitting fossil fuels are absorbed by the forest, mak­ing them a terrestrial carbon sink.
• Trees absorb carbon diox­ide (CO2), release oxygen by way of photosynthesis, and store carbon in their trunks.
• When they shed, soil mi­crobes work to decompose the leaves and other organic matter that releases the trapped carbon dioxide.

Differential growth:

• Data from the U.S. De­partment of Agriculture’s Forest Inventory and Analy­sis program found trees on the forest edges grow nearly twice as fast as interior trees.
• This is likely because the trees on the edge don’t have competition with interior forest, so they get more light.

Soil behaviour:

• Warmer tempera­tures at the edge of the forest caused leaves and organic matter to decompose faster, as it forced soil microorgan­isms to work harder and re­lease more carbon dioxide than their cooler, more shad­ed peers in the forest inte­rior.

Role of plantations:

• Plantations like western ghats de­plete groundwater, have higher surface water runoff, poorer soil infiltration, com­pared to trees in natural for­ests.
• The carbon stocks in plantations such as teak and eucalyptus were 30% to 50% lower than in natural evergreen forests.
• They are generally less sta­ble and resilient.
• The biggest loss, however, is that of spe­cies dependent on forests— from insects to primates— are ripped apart from their natural habitats and planta­tions, which are mostly monocultures, rarely had the capacity to support a rich, biodiverse system.