Primary forests are spatially diverse terrestrial ecosystems with unique characteristics, being naturally regenerative and heterogeneous, which supports the stability of their carbon storage through the accumulation of live and dead biomass. Yet, little is known about the interactions between biomass stocks, tree genus diversity and structure across a temperate montane primary forest.
The uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by terrestrial ecosystems is critical for moderating climate change. To protect the carbon sink, land management policies are needed to limit deforestation, promote forest restoration and improve timber-harvesting practices.
Restoration of forest ecosystems by allowing continued growth of regenerating forests, active restoration measures, and re-connecting fragmented remnants across landscapes, will provide crucial mitigation benefits that contribute to emissions reduction targets as well as existing and future co-benefits.
Sonia is a GIS modelling expert at multiple scales, specialising in visualisation of geographic data and spatial and temporal ecological modelling.
The need for integrated policy action to mitigate climate change and conserve biodiversity has now been recognised in Article 38 of the Glasgow Climate Pact. This emphasises the importance of protecting, conserving and restoring nature and ecosystems, including forests and other terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
Anita specialises in the governance of Red panda conservation and natural habitat protection, sociological perspective of climate change, natural resource management including forestry, red panda, institutional development of a community forest user group, gender and social inclusion.
Upama has expertise in Remote sensing and GIS, application of RS-GIS in natural resources management studies, Climate change, forest and disaster, ecosystem services, PES, Agriculture.
Rules and guidelines that treat forests equally in key international policy frameworks regardless of their risk profiles limit their effectiveness and can facilitate forest degradation. Here we assess the potential for using a framework of ecosystem integrity to guide policy goals.
The recent shift towards using forest biomass burning for energy comes with grave risks of highly perverse outcomes, including increased CO2 emissions and negative impacts on forest ecosystem integrity.
Data from Europe shows that there has been a major increase in the intensification of logging in Europe over the past five to seven years and this could prevent many European nations reaching their emissions reduction targets under the Paris and Glasgow agreements. The same process is now being pushed heavily by certain forest industry lobbyists and government agencies in several Australian states, including Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales.
Mature and old-growth forests of the United States collectively support exceptional levels of biodiversity but have declined substantially from logging and development.
Dr. Rogers investigates how boreal forests are responding to climate change and land use, how this feeds back to climate change, and how management and policy can be used for mitigation and adaptation.
Heather is a Senior Research Fellow at Griffith University. Her research is aimed at understanding the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, particularly forests, to improve their management for conservation and climate change mitigation.
Dominick is Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage, and former President of the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section and internationally renowned author of over 200 science papers on forest and fire ecology, conservation biology, endangered species management, and landscape ecology. .
Project Director and Director of the Griffith Climate Action Beacon at Griffith University, contributing to community planning and engagement in forest projects.
British Columbia contains under-appreciated carbon stocks, which if protected, can help Canada meet its climate and conservation targets, but only if there are major forestry reforms to protect carbon-dense old-growth forests.
Historical forest disturbance have an impact on forest ecosystem co-benefits and trade-offs. Accounting for long-term variations of past disturbances can improve policies aimed at mitigating climate change and biodiversity loss.
Nature-based solutions provide opportunities for climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation and ameliorating environmental degradation. But those opportunities are not materialising as current carbon accounting is deficient for use in evaluating them.
Some have argued that against conserving forests, alleging that ‘managing’ forests, including for bioenergy, produces more climate mitigation than letting them grow. However, this conclusion is based on not counting emissions from burning biomass, and other carbon accounting sleight of hand.
The world’s contain irreplaceable biodiversity and are critical to the regulation of the global climate and maintaining stable carbon pools. Carbon-dense primary forests are found in every major forest biome and they typically support higher levels of biodiversity than logged forests, especially imperiled and endemic species, yet their value is not fully recognised in climate policy.
The carbon stock in Europe’s forests is decreasing and the importance of protecting ‘unmanaged’ forests must be recognised in reversing this process. Scientific evidence suggests that ‘unmanaged’ forests have higher total biomass carbon stock than secondary forests being actively managed for commodity production or recently abandoned.
The climate change and biodiversity crises are intertwined. The loss of biodiversity reduces the resilience of both planet and people and narrows our response options for defeating climate change. Too often, though, biodiversity and climate change are dealt with in relative isolation by governments, intergovernmental processes, and other key actors and stakeholders.
Primary forests sequester more carbon, more safely than planted forests and offer far greater biodiversity benefits. We cannot resolve the climate or biodiversity crises without prioritising the protection of primary forests, argue members of the Primary Forests Task Force.