Tropical forest restoration under future climate change

One of the most promising ways to rapidly remove CO2 from the atmosphere is through the restoration of tropical forests. Ongoing and future climate change may, however, threaten the permanence of carbon stored through restoration. Excessive heat, drought or increased disturbances such as wildfire could all negatively impact the integrity of restored carbon. To investigate these risks to tropical forest restoration, we performed 221 simulations with a dynamic global vegetation model (LPJ-LMfire) driven by a range of future climate scenarios and ecophysiological responses to CO2 concentrations. We show that carbon in restored tropical forests is largely preserved under the entire range of potential future climates, regardless of assumptions we make about the potential for CO2 fertilization of photosynthesis. Restoring even half of the potential area can account for 56–69% of the carbon storage, depending on whether areas are selected for low cost or high carbon gain.

Alexander Koch, Jed O. Kaplan