Greener but not taller: LiDAR shows South Asia's forest greening is concentrated in structurally depleted forest
Abstract
India and China lead the world in greening, and forest greening is widely read as a sign of recovery. Greenness, however, tracks foliage and says little about forest type or height. MODIS greening trends for 2001 to 2024 and a new 10 m map separating natural forest from plantations and tree crops showed that natural forest supplied 65% of South Asia's woody greening. Against least-disturbed forest of the same ecoregion and elevation, GEDI LiDAR showed strongly depleted forest to be 17 percentage points more likely to green than reference-like forest, and over half the greening natural forest was depleted. An independent Landsat record tied depleted forest to past disturbance and its greening to regrowth. Natural forest lacks 592 Tg (15%) of reference aboveground carbon, 60% of the deficit in greening forest. Forest greening in South Asia largely marks regrowth in forest that remains structurally depleted, not forest that has recovered.
Related
- Lignin-derived anode materials could offer a greener alternative to graphite for lithium-ion batteries
- Mitochondrial and bioenergetic processes are enriched in large-but are reciprocally depleted in small extracellular vesicles
- From horticultural greening to urban ecological restoration: How to favour herbaceous biodiversity when de-sealing
- Is greening enough? Short-term limited effects of 2015-2022 European Common Agricultural Policy reform on bird diversity in northern Italy
- Engineering a gut bacterium depleted in industrialized microbiomes to survive malabsorption
BibTeX
@misc{mishra2026greener,
title = {{Greener but not taller: LiDAR shows South Asia's forest greening is concentrated in structurally depleted forest}},
author = {Niti B Mishra and Gargi Chaudhuri},
howpublished = {EarthArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.31223/x58j8f},
url = {https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/16001/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Greener but not taller: LiDAR shows South Asia's forest greening is concentrated in structurally depleted forest
AU - Niti B Mishra
AU - Gargi Chaudhuri
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/06
PB - EarthArXiv
DO - 10.31223/x58j8f
UR - https://eartharxiv.org/repository/view/16001/
AB - India and China lead the world in greening, and forest greening is widely read as a sign of recovery. Greenness, however, tracks foliage and says little about forest type or height. MODIS greening trends for 2001 to 2024 and a new 10 m map separating natural forest from plantations and tree crops showed that natural forest supplied 65% of South Asia's woody greening. Against least-disturbed forest of the same ecoregion and elevation, GEDI LiDAR showed strongly depleted forest to be 17 percentage points more likely to green than reference-like forest, and over half the greening natural forest was depleted. An independent Landsat record tied depleted forest to past disturbance and its greening to regrowth. Natural forest lacks 592 Tg (15%) of reference aboveground carbon, 60% of the deficit in greening forest. Forest greening in South Asia largely marks regrowth in forest that remains structurally depleted, not forest that has recovered.
ER -