What is the carbon balance of tropical managed forests?

Managed forests are a major component of tropical landscapes and almost half of standing primary tropical forests, up to 400 million ha, are designated by national forest services for timber production. However, so far, most of our understanding of the tropical forest carbon cycle yields is from plot networks located in old-growth undisturbed forests while the carbon balance of managed forests at the regional and continental scale remains poorly studied. Here we propose a methodological framework in order to quantify the carbon footprint of selective logging at a regional scale. The yearly balance of a logged forest unit is modeled by aggregating 3 submodels dealing with (i) emissions from extracted wood, (ii) emissions from logging damages and (iii) storage from biomass recovery after logging. Models are parameterized and uncertainties are propagated through a MCMC algorithm. We used the 30-years statistics from the National Forest Service to estimate the carbon balance of managed forests in French Guiana. Over this period, selective logging emitted 0.76 Tg C in the atmosphere. Our results highlight the key role of the local carbon cycle in managed forests for climate regulation at the global scale. (Texte intégral)

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Hérault, Bruno, Piponiot-Laroche, Camille
Format:	conference_item biblioteca
Language:	eng
Published:	ATBC
Subjects:	K10 - Production forestière, K01 - Foresterie - Considérations générales, P01 - Conservation de la nature et ressources foncières, P40 - Météorologie et climatologie, F62 - Physiologie végétale - Croissance et développement,
Online Access:	http://agritrop.cirad.fr/581231/ http://agritrop.cirad.fr/581231/1/Page%20311%20de%20ATBC%202016-2.pdf
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