Trees are a critical part of the carbon cycle, in which carbon moves between the atmosphere, ocean and land. Forests take a while to recover and the mix of species is often different: in a rain forest, for example, species that thrive in full light tend to take over until the canopy regrows. The trees are also younger and smaller, so the recovering forest stores less carbon. If this cycle of damage and regrowth — what ecologists call a disturbance regime — occurs more often as extreme storms become more frequent, some forests may never recover completely. Over decades, the reduction in stored carbon would likely become permanent. More carbon from human activity would remain in the atmosphere to contribute to climate change, or would have to be removed in other ways. “If the climate warms, so does the ability of those systems to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.”
At www.nytimes.com
