Amidst the Earth’s record-breaking heat, a groundbreaking global study has revealed that storing carbon in soil because the Earth warms”>rising temperatures are fueling the proliferation of woody vines, posing a threat to the crucial role of forests in cooling the atmosphere by storing carbon.
The identified hotspots for this phenomenon are tropical forests at low elevations, including regions in East Africa, Vietnam, Colombia, Australia’s Wet Tropics, and various other locations worldwide.
Professor Andy Marshall, from UniSC’s Forest Research Institute, emphasized the team’s discovery of a “tipping point” in environmental conditions that leads to the dominance of lianas, a type of woody vine that strangles trees and impedes their growth as it climbs towards the forest canopy.
This critical threshold for forests already impacted by logging, deforestation, and other human activities occurs when the mean annual temperature exceeds 27.8° Celsius and rainfall is less than 1,614 mm.
“Woody vines are increasingly encroaching on the world’s forests. This global assessment confirms that forest disturbance and climatic factors are significant drivers of liana dominance for the first time,” Professor Marshall stated.
2024-01-21 15:41:03
Original from phys.org