Human activity has caused some rainforests to switch from being a solution for climate change, to a source of it, a new study has found.The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, discovered that Africa’s forests and woody savannas, which “historically acted as a carbon sink, removing atmospheric carbon and storing it as biomass” made “a critical transition from a carbon sink to a carbon source between 2010 and 2017”.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listUsing satellite data, researchers at the National Centre for Earth Observation at the Universities of Leicester, Sheffield and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom were able to track the changes in the amount of carbon being absorbed by trees and woody areas.“The implications of this shift are profound. Africa’s forests and woodlands have historically served as a carbon sink. Now, they are contributing to widening the global greenhouse gas emissions gap that needs to be filled to stay within the goals of the Paris Agreement,” the report stated.The 2015 Paris Agreement is a treaty between 196 countries acting to mitigate climate change and to keep the world’s temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.What has the study found?In short, Africa’s forests are facing “increasing pressures” which have led to a decline in their ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere.Currently, Africa’s forests are responsible for about one-fifth of global carbon removal. The largest …
