Planted Forests Greened 7% Slower Than Natural Forests in Southern China Over the Past Forty Years

Abstract Forests have seen a strong greening trend worldwide, and previous studies have attributed this mainly to land‐use conversions such as afforestation. However, for the greening of existing forests, the role of human interventions is unclear. Here we paired neighboring natural and planted forests in Southern China to minimize the differences between the forest types and analyzed the vegetation index EVI2 from Landsat over 1987 to 2021. The EVI2 trends observed in natural forests can be seen as mainly responses to large‐scale environmental changes, whereas the difference between the forest types represents the impact caused by human interventions. We found that though the mean EVI2 of planted forests was comparable to that of natural forests, the greening trends were overall 7.0% lower in planted forests. Our results suggest that human interventions associated with planted forests did not accelerate their greening, indicating the necessity for refined policies to enhance future forest greening.

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Publication Details

Journal
Geophysical Research Letters
Published
2024-09-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1029/2024gl111209
Citations
4
Primary Topic
Forest, Soil, and Plant Ecology in China
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
8.38

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article

Planted Forests Greened 7% Slower Than Natural Forests in Southern China Over the Past Forty Years

Torbern Tagesson, Anders Ahlström, Jia Sun, Shaoqiang Wang et al.
4 citations
Geophysical Research Letters
Forest, Soil, and Plant Ecology in China
8.38
article

Planted Forests Greened 7% Slower Than Natural Forests in Southern China Over the Past Forty Years

Torbern Tagesson, Anders Ahlström, Jia Sun, Shaoqiang Wang, Feng Tian, Zenghui Fan, Wentao Ye, Weifu Tan, Lunche Wang, Shu Xu, Qin Tan
article en
4 citations

Abstract

Abstract Forests have seen a strong greening trend worldwide, and previous studies have attributed this mainly to land‐use conversions such as afforestation. However, for the greening of existing forests, the role of human interventions is unclear. Here we paired neighboring natural and planted forests in Southern China to minimize the differences between the forest types and analyzed the vegetation index EVI2 from Landsat over 1987 to 2021. The EVI2 trends observed in natural forests can be seen as mainly responses to large‐scale environmental changes, whereas the difference between the forest types represents the impact caused by human interventions. We found that though the mean EVI2 of planted forests was comparable to that of natural forests, the greening trends were overall 7.0% lower in planted forests. Our results suggest that human interventions associated with planted forests did not accelerate their greening, indicating the necessity for refined policies to enhance future forest greening.

Geophysical Research LettersVol. 51(19)
Australian National University (AU), University of Copenhagen (DK), Liaoning Normal University (CN), Lund University (SE), China University of Geosciences (CN), Wuhan University (CN), Aerospace Information Research Institute (CN), Jiangxi Province Forestry Survey Planning Institute (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, Swedish National Space Agency, Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas, Vetenskapsrådet, Wuhan University
Openalex Percentile: Top 3%
Forest, Soil, and Plant Ecology in China
8.38
DOIOpen Access PDFOpenAlex
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