Species-rich forests store twice as much carbon as monocultures

Reforestation with a variety of tree species would help biodiversity and climate

Species-rich subtropical forests can take up, on average, twice as much carbon as monocultures. This has been reported by an international research team with the involvement of the TU Dresden in the scientific journal SCIENCE. The study was carried out as part of a unique field experiment - BEF China -, which runs for almost ten years now in eastern China. The experiment comprises forests grown specifically for this purpose; for the study, data from experimental plots with a total of over 150,000 trees were analysed. The researchers believe that the results speak in favour of using many different tree species during reforestation. Thus, both species conservation and climate protection can be promoted.

Link to the press release of the University of Zurich
https://www.media.uzh.ch/en/Press-Releases/2018/Species-Rich-Forests1.html

Link to the press release of the iDiv
https://www.idiv.de/en/news/news_single_view/news_article/species_rich-1.html

Original publication

Huang Y, Chen Y, Castro-Izaguirre N, Baruffol M, Brezzi M, Lang A, Li Y, Härdtle W, von Oheimb G, Yang X, Liu X, Pei K, Both S, Yang B, Eichenberg D, Assmann T, Bauhus J, Behrens T, Buscot F, Chen XJ, Chesters D, Ding BY, Durka W, Erfmeier A, Fang J, Fischer M, Guo LD, Guo D, Gutknecht JLM, He JS, He CL, Hector A, Hönig L, Hu RY, Klein AM, Kühn P, Liang Y, Li S, Michalski S, Scherer-Lorenzen M, Schmidt K, Scholten T, Schuldt A, Shi X, Tan MZ, Tang Z, Trogisch S, Wang Z, Welk E, Wirth C, Wubet T, Xiang W, Yu M, Yu XD, Zhang J, Zhang S, Zhang N, Zhou HZ, Zhu CD, Zhu L, Bruelheide H, Ma K, Niklaus PA, Schmid B (2018): Impacts of species richness on productivity in a large-scale subtropical forest experiment. Science 362: 80-83. DOI: 10.1126/science.aat6405. science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6410/80