A climate risk analysis of Earth’s forests in the 21st century

William R. L. Anderegg, Chao Wu, Nezha Acil, Nuno Carvalhais, Thomas A. M. Pugh, Jon P. Sadler, Rupert Seidl

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Abstract

Earth’s forests harbor extensive biodiversity and are currently a major carbon sink. Forest conservation and restoration can help mitigate climate change; however, climate change could fundamentally imperil forests in many regions and undermine their ability to provide such mitigation. The extent of climate risks facing forests has not been synthesized globally nor have different approaches to quantifying forest climate risks been systematically compared. We combine outputs from multiple mechanistic and empirical approaches to modeling carbon, biodiversity, and disturbance risks to conduct a synthetic climate risk analysis for Earth’s forests in the 21st century. Despite large uncertainty in most regions we find that some forests are consistently at higher risk, including southern boreal forests and those in western North America and parts of the Amazon.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1099–1103
Number of pages5
JournalScience
Volume377
Issue number6610
Early online date1 Sept 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2 Sept 2022

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© 2022 American Association for the Advancement of Science. All rights reserved.

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