Trees at the edges of forests often seem like an afterthought, but those trees may play an outsized role in carbon storage, new research from the northeastern United States has found.
“Forest edges are traditionally viewed as degraded remnants that are lesser than the interior pristine forests,” said ecologist and Ph.D. candidate Luca Morreale of Boston University. But in reality, these forest edges, along roads, housing developments, and farming fields, have 24% more biomass than areas of forest farther from an edge.
Morreale looked at the speed of tree growth and other factors in more than 48,000 forest plots in the northeastern United States tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Trees within 30 meters of an edge grew nearly twice as fast, and more sunlight fueled a higher tree density. Morreale published the work in Nature Communications late last year.
—Jenessa Duncombe (@jrdscience), Staff Writer