Tropical deforestation and atmospheric carbon dioxide

Abstract

Recent estimates of the net release of carbon to the atmosphere from deforestation in the tropics have ranged between 0.4 and 2.5 × 1015 g yr-1. Two things have happened to require a revision of these estimates. First, refinements of the methods used to estimate the stocks of carbon in the vegetation of tropical forests have produced new estimates that are intermediate between the previous high and low estimates of carbon stocks. Second, the previous range of estimates of flux was based on rates of deforestation in 1980. Myer's recent estimate of the rates of tropical deforestation in 1989 is about 90% higher than the rates just 10 years ago. -from Author