[via Huffington Post]
Scientists have long promoted rain forest preservation as a way to mitigate climate change, but now it turns out that regrowing forests is just as important.
Newly grown tropical forests can capture harmful carbon from the atmosphere at a rate up to 11 times faster than older forests, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday. The study includes a map of Latin America (pictured below) that shows the regions with the greatest potential for carbon capture.
“It is about reducing carbon loss by reducing deforestation, and increasing carbon uptake by allowing young forests to regrow,” Dr. Lourens Poorter, professor of functional ecology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and lead author of the study, told The Huffington Post. “It is time to appreciate and value the role that these secondary forests can play in highly fragmented human-modified landscapes.”
[Read the rest of the article here.]