01 July 2021
A study featured today on IIASA’s NEXUS research blog once again highlights that a systematic integrated approach is necessary when gaining insights into natural processes, such as plant species composition and vegetation carbon storage, both of which affect the functioning of tropical forests under projected climate change.
Research like this enables scientists to determine how much of man-made carbon emissions will be sequestered into plant biomass or will be released back to the atmosphere, and therefore might further heat up the climate system.
“Our findings indicate that we would have to account for the small-scale heterogeneity of the landscape in order to understand future ecosystem responses to projected climate change, and thus to accurately predict associated tropical ecosystem services under future scenarios”, says Hofhansl (lead author of the study conducted by an international consortium).
The positive uptake by the research community echoes the value of conducting on-site experiments that empower researchers to understand crucial ecosystem processes and applying the obtained results in next-generation models, designed to forecast climate change and its impact on humankind.
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