Integrated global assessment of the natural forest carbon potential

Abstract Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system 1 . Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests 2–5 are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these estimates. Here we combine several ground-sourced 6 and satellite-derived approaches 2,7,8 to evaluate the scale of the global forest carbon potential outside agricultural and urban lands. Despite regional variation, the predictions demonstrated remarkable consistency at a global scale, with only a 12% difference between the ground-sourced and…

• SR
  Sight Research UK

  Awards: NE/N011570/1, NE/I028122/1, NE/R017980/1, NE/N012542/1, NE/S011811/1, NE/W001691/1, NE/D010306/1, NE/D005590/1, NE/S01537X/1
• SN
  Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

  Award: PZ00P3_193646
• CS
  China Scholarship Council
• NE
  Natural Environment Research Council

  Awards: NE/S011811/1, NE/W001691/1, NE/N012542/1, NE/D010306/1, NE/S01537X/1, NE/I028122/1, NE/D005590/1, NE/R017980/1, NE/N011570/1