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An international team of researchers have directly informed policy development through their finding that avoiding deforestation plays an important role in climate change mitigation.
The researchers, led by Professor Oliver Phillips from the University of Leeds, have discovered that undisturbed forests in Amazonia are not only huge carbon stores (around 100 billion tonnes of carbon), but are also net sinks of carbon (0.5 billion tonnes every year); this is contrary to the conventional wisdom that undisturbed forests are in carbon balance. The findings were included in major reports including the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change reports.
NERC funded Amazon research continues to find further evidence such as the unusual and severe Amazon drought in 2005 led to the region emitting an extra five billion tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This exceeds the annual emissions of Europe and Japan. The finding, part of a 30-year study, provides the first solid evidence that drought causes massive carbon loss in tropical forests, mainly through killing trees.