Research uncovers new information about the role that forest edges play in buffering global impacts of climate change and urbanization.
Forests actually store more carbon dioxide than they release, which is great news for us: about 30 percent of carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are taken in by forests, an effect called the terrestrial carbon sink.
«That’s CO2 that’s not in the atmosphere,» says Boston University biogeochemist and ecologist Lucy Hutyra. «We’re not feeling the full effects of climate change because of the terrestrial climate sink. These forests are doing an incredible service to our planet.»
For more than a decade, Hutyra has been investigating what happens to the planet’s «lungs» when large forests are cut down into smaller patches, a process researchers call forest fragmentation.
«We think about forests as big landscapes, but really they are chopped up into all these little segments because of the human world,» says Hutyra, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of Earth and environment. Forests get cut into smaller parcels, as chunks are taken down to make space for roads, buildings, agriculture, and solar farms — one of the biggest drivers of forest loss in Massachusetts. These alterations to forests create more areas called forest edges — literally, the trees at the outermost edge of a forest.
It has long been assumed that these forest edges release and store carbon at similar rates as forest interiors, but Hutyra and researchers in her lab at BU have discovered this isn’t true. Soils and trees in temperate forest edges in the Northeast United States are acting differently than those farther away from people. In two recent research papers, Hutyra’s team found edge trees grow faster than their country cousins deep in the forest, and that soil in urban areas can hoard more carbon dioxide than previously thought. Their results can challenge current ideas about conservation and the value of urban forests as more than places for recreation.
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Materials provided by Boston University. Original written by Jessica Colarossi. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.