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Planted Forests Greened 7% Slower Than Natural Forests in Southern China Over the Past Forty Years

Fan, Zenghui ; Sun, Jia LU orcid ; Tagesson, Torbern LU ; Wang, Lunche ; Xu, Shu ; Tan, Weifu ; Tian, Feng LU ; Ye, Wentao ; Tan, Qin and Wang, Shaoqiang , et al. (2024) In Geophysical Research Letters 51(19).
Abstract

Forests have seen a strong greening trend worldwide, and previous studies have attributed this mainly to land-use conversions such as afforestation. However, for the greening of existing forests, the role of human interventions is unclear. Here we paired neighboring natural and planted forests in Southern China to minimize the differences between the forest types and analyzed the vegetation index EVI2 from Landsat over 1987 to 2021. The EVI2 trends observed in natural forests can be seen as mainly responses to large-scale environmental changes, whereas the difference between the forest types represents the impact caused by human interventions. We found that though the mean EVI2 of planted forests was comparable to that of natural... (More)

Forests have seen a strong greening trend worldwide, and previous studies have attributed this mainly to land-use conversions such as afforestation. However, for the greening of existing forests, the role of human interventions is unclear. Here we paired neighboring natural and planted forests in Southern China to minimize the differences between the forest types and analyzed the vegetation index EVI2 from Landsat over 1987 to 2021. The EVI2 trends observed in natural forests can be seen as mainly responses to large-scale environmental changes, whereas the difference between the forest types represents the impact caused by human interventions. We found that though the mean EVI2 of planted forests was comparable to that of natural forests, the greening trends were overall 7.0% lower in planted forests. Our results suggest that human interventions associated with planted forests did not accelerate their greening, indicating the necessity for refined policies to enhance future forest greening.

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organization
publishing date
type
Contribution to journal
publication status
published
subject
keywords
carbon cycle, environmental change, land use impacts, natural forest, planted forest
in
Geophysical Research Letters
volume
51
issue
19
article number
e2024GL111209
publisher
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
external identifiers
  • scopus:85205308141
ISSN
0094-8276
DOI
10.1029/2024GL111209
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
6eb42d48-4162-4ac5-8a7d-e876db617ab7
date added to LUP
2024-12-05 08:43:49
date last changed
2025-06-05 23:41:31
@article{6eb42d48-4162-4ac5-8a7d-e876db617ab7,
  abstract     = {{<p>Forests have seen a strong greening trend worldwide, and previous studies have attributed this mainly to land-use conversions such as afforestation. However, for the greening of existing forests, the role of human interventions is unclear. Here we paired neighboring natural and planted forests in Southern China to minimize the differences between the forest types and analyzed the vegetation index EVI2 from Landsat over 1987 to 2021. The EVI2 trends observed in natural forests can be seen as mainly responses to large-scale environmental changes, whereas the difference between the forest types represents the impact caused by human interventions. We found that though the mean EVI2 of planted forests was comparable to that of natural forests, the greening trends were overall 7.0% lower in planted forests. Our results suggest that human interventions associated with planted forests did not accelerate their greening, indicating the necessity for refined policies to enhance future forest greening.</p>}},
  author       = {{Fan, Zenghui and Sun, Jia and Tagesson, Torbern and Wang, Lunche and Xu, Shu and Tan, Weifu and Tian, Feng and Ye, Wentao and Tan, Qin and Wang, Shaoqiang and Ahlström, Anders}},
  issn         = {{0094-8276}},
  keywords     = {{carbon cycle; environmental change; land use impacts; natural forest; planted forest}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{10}},
  number       = {{19}},
  publisher    = {{American Geophysical Union (AGU)}},
  series       = {{Geophysical Research Letters}},
  title        = {{Planted Forests Greened 7% Slower Than Natural Forests in Southern China Over the Past Forty Years}},
  url          = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2024GL111209}},
  doi          = {{10.1029/2024GL111209}},
  volume       = {{51}},
  year         = {{2024}},
}