https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2024.103729">
 

Abstract

The carbon sinks of North American boreal forests have been threatened by global warming and forest disturbances in recent decades, but knowledge about the carbon balance of these forests in recent years remains unknown. We tracked annual aboveground carbon (AGC) changes from 2016 to 2021 across the forest regions of NASA's Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) core study domain, using Vegetation Optical Depth derived from low-frequency passive microwave observations. The results showed that these forests showed a net AGC increase of + 28.49 Tg C/yr during the study period, with total AGC gains of + 219.34 Tg C/yr counteracting total AGC losses of −190.86 Tg C/yr. Forest degradation (-162.21 Tg C/yr), defined as a reduction in the capacity of forest to provide goods and services, contributes 5 times more to the total AGC loss than forest cover loss (-28.65 Tg C/yr), defined as the complete removal of tree cover. This indicates that degradation has dominated AGC loss in the region.

Department

Earth Systems Research Center

Publication Date

3-6-2024

Journal Title

International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation

Publisher

Elsevier BV

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2024.103729

Document Type

Article

Rights

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.

Comments

This is an open access article published by Elsevier BV in International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation in 2024, available online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2024.103729

Download

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.