Forests and Climate Change: Forcings, Feedbacks, and the Climate Benefits of Forests

The world's forests influence climate through physical, chemical, and biological processes that affect planetary energetics, the hydrologic cycle, and atmospheric composition. These complex and nonlinear forest-atmosphere interactions can dampen or amplify anthropogenic climate change. Tropical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2008-06, Vol.320 (5882), p.1444-1449
Main Author: Bonan, Gordon B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agriculture
Albedo
Atmosphere
Boreal forests
Carbon
Carbon sequestration
Climate
Climate change
Climate cycles
Climate models
Coniferous forests
Conservation of Natural Resources
Deciduous forests
Ecosystem
Feedback
Forests
Global climate models
Global warming
Greenhouse Effect
Nonlinear systems
Review
Temperature
Trees
Tropical Climate
Tropical forests
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Summary:The world's forests influence climate through physical, chemical, and biological processes that affect planetary energetics, the hydrologic cycle, and atmospheric composition. These complex and nonlinear forest-atmosphere interactions can dampen or amplify anthropogenic climate change. Tropical, temperate, and boreal reforestation and afforestation attenuate global warming through carbon sequestration. Biogeophysical feedbacks can enhance or diminish this negative climate forcing. Tropical forests mitigate warming through evaporative cooling, but the low albedo of boreal forests is a positive climate forcing. The evaporative effect of temperate forests is unclear. The net climate forcing from these and other processes is not known. Forests are under tremendous pressure from global change. Interdisciplinary science that integrates knowledge of the many interacting climate services of forests with the impacts of global change is necessary to identify and understand as yet unexplored feedbacks in the Earth system and the potential of forests to mitigate climate change.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1155121