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If you take an area without forest and plant a forest on it then when the tree dies a new one grows in its place. A mature forest is roughly carbon neutral but
by ufo 12y ago
If you take an area without forest and plant a forest on it then when the tree dies a new one grows in its place. A mature forest is roughly carbon neutral but reflorestation is taking a bunch of carbon from the atmosphere and converting it to tree trunks.
- lgieron 12y agoDoes that mean that the Amazon rainforest is carbon neutral?
- nols 12y agoIt was a major carbon sink, but as the climate warms up trees die earlier and release more carbon so it's becoming a carbon emitter. It's obviously hard to calculate an exact plus or minus, but it's not looking good, especially with the amount of deforestation occurring.
- ufo 12y agoFor now, the biggest contribution of the amazon rainforest in terms of climate is improving rainfall. If you cut down all that trees that regious would pretty quickly turn into a big desert (in fact, the forest is actually recent in geological terms)