Written by Bill Stewart, University of California Berkeley
The varying estimates of the role of tropical deforestation in the emission of greenhouse gasses have dwarfed the unique role that temperate forests play in mitigating the negative impacts of greenhouse gas additions to the atmosphere. In 2010, forest-related measurements for CO2 reduced the negative impacts from tropical deforestation and reaffirmed the large and growing carbon sink provided by managed temperate forests (Friedlingstein 2010).
Temperate forests have historically been well mapped …