Tropical vegetation stores more carbon than thought

Washington -  The first ever "wall-to-wall" map of carbon storage of tropical vegetation in Africa, Asia and South America has shown that it stores 21 percent more carbon than estimated.

Scientists from Woods Hole Research Centre (WHRC), Boston University, and the University of Maryland produced the map using a combination of remote sensing and field data.

Reliable estimates of carbon storage are critical to understanding the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by changes in land cover and land use, the journal Nature Climate Change reports.

Tropical deforestation in many developing countries is considered a major source of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, releasing as much as 1.1 billion tonnes of carbon into the air every year, according to a Woods Hole statement.

"For the first time we were able to derive accurate estimates of carbon densities using satellite LiDAR observations in places that have never been measured," said Alessandro Baccini, assistant scientist at Woods Hole, who led the study.

Based on new data in this study, researchers believe that current models may overestimate the net flux of carbon into the atmosphere due to tropical vegetation loss by 11 to 12 percent.