Skip to content
DraconiticResearch
Search Sources API
203,234 studies31 sourcesUpdated 19 min ago
Peer-reviewedCC BYNature Communications

Decadal sink-source shifts of forest aboveground carbon since 1988

  • Zhen Qian1,2
  • Sebastian Bathiany3,4
  • Teng Liu3,4,5
  • Lana L. Blaschke3,4
  • Hoong Chen Teo3,4
  • Niklas Boers6,7
7 affiliations
  1. 1Munich Climate Center and Earth System Modelling Group, Department of Aerospace and Geodesy, TUM School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany. [email protected]
  2. 2Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany. [email protected]
  3. 3Munich Climate Center and Earth System Modelling Group, Department of Aerospace and Geodesy, TUM School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany
  4. 4Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany
  5. 5School of Systems Science and Institute of Nonequilibrium Systems, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
  6. 6Munich Climate Center and Earth System Modelling Group, Department of Aerospace and Geodesy, TUM School of Engineering and Design, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany. [email protected]
  7. 7Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany. [email protected]
Open at sourcePDFDOICite

Abstract

Forest ecosystems are vital to the global carbon cycle, yet their long-term aboveground carbon (AGC) dynamics remain uncertain. Here, we integrate multi-source satellite observations with probabilistic deep learning models to reconstruct a harmonized, uncertainty-aware global forest AGC record from 1988 to 2021 at 0.25 ∘ . We find that, although global forests sequestered 6.2 PgC, moist tropical and boreal forests have progressively transitioned toward carbon sources since the early 2000s. Tropical AGC variability became increasingly negatively correlated with atmospheric CO 2 growth rates (r = – 0.63 in 2011–2021), suggesting tropical forests increasingly modulate the global carbon cycle. In the Brazilian Amazon, the contribution of intact forests to the year-to-year variations in AGC losses increased from 33% in the 1990s to 76% in the 2010s. Our findings highlight the vulnerability of carbon stocks in key biomes and provide a benchmark to track emerging sink-source shifts under anthropogenic climate change.

Related

  1. Biomass Distribution and Aboveground Carbon Stock in Green Retaining Walls Covered with Hedera colchica
    Turan Yüksek, Filiz Yüksek, Gülcay Ercan Oğuztürk +2
    Plants (Basel, Switzerland)Peer-reviewedCC BYFull textPlant biologyEurope PMC
  2. Combined Return Synergizes Aboveground Photosynthesis and Subsurface Soil Organic Carbon Stock to Boost Spring Wheat Yield in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau
    Xiaoyan Wang, Nannan Hu, Mingdan Song +2
    Plants (Basel, Switzerland)Peer-reviewedCC BYFull textPlant biologyEurope PMC
  3. Land-use legacies and drought exposure affect aboveground carbon dynamics along elevational gradients in tropical forests of China
    Ruiming Cheng, Huiwen Wang, Chen Chen +7
    Forest Ecology and ManagementPeer-reviewedLicence not statedEcologyHAL
  4. Contribution of aboveground and belowground biomass of Robinia pseudoacacia trees to total plant carbon stocks in a young agroforestry system
    Soline Martin-Blangy, Christophe Jourdan, Isabelle Bertrand +5
    Agricultural and Forest MeteorologyPeer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Full textGeneral biologyAtmospheric science & meteorologyHAL
  5. Forest canopy height change due to demographic and allometric shifts
    J. W. Lichstein, M. J. Woods, J. A. Hogan +1
    bioRxivPreprintCC BY-NC-NDFull textEcologybioRxiv

Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{qian2026decadal,
  title = {{Decadal sink-source shifts of forest aboveground carbon since 1988}},
  author = {Zhen Qian and Sebastian Bathiany and Teng Liu and Lana L. Blaschke and Hoong Chen Teo and Niklas Boers},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  year = {2026},
  month = jul,
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-76093-3},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-76093-3},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Decadal sink-source shifts of forest aboveground carbon since 1988
AU  - Zhen Qian
AU  - Sebastian Bathiany
AU  - Teng Liu
AU  - Lana L. Blaschke
AU  - Hoong Chen Teo
AU  - Niklas Boers
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/07/30
JO  - Nature Communications
DO  - 10.1038/s41467-026-76093-3
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-76093-3
AB  - Forest ecosystems are vital to the global carbon cycle, yet their long-term aboveground carbon (AGC) dynamics remain uncertain. Here, we integrate multi-source satellite observations with probabilistic deep learning models to reconstruct a harmonized, uncertainty-aware global forest AGC record from 1988 to 2021 at 0.25 ∘ . We find that, although global forests sequestered 6.2 PgC, moist tropical and boreal forests have progressively transitioned toward carbon sources since the early 2000s. Tropical AGC variability became increasingly negatively correlated with atmospheric CO 2 growth rates (r = – 0.63 in 2011–2021), suggesting tropical forests increasingly modulate the global carbon cycle. In the Brazilian Amazon, the contribution of intact forests to the year-to-year variations in AGC losses increased from 33% in the 1990s to 76% in the 2010s. Our findings highlight the vulnerability of carbon stocks in key biomes and provide a benchmark to track emerging sink-source shifts under anthropogenic climate change.
SN  - 2041-1723
ER  -