Disturbed tropical forest patch sizes

Often called Earth’s green lungs, tropical forests pull down massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, release oxygen and help regulate the global climate. While the threat of large-scale deforestation is well known, new findings reveal a surprising culprit – the clearance of small areas of forest accounts for more than half of all carbon losses across the Tropics.

Published in Nature, the study groups forest disturbances into five size classes: 0–2, 2–20, 20–200, 200–1000, and >1000 hectares. For each large land area (1°, about 100 km across in the Tropics), the colour shows the most common forest disturbance size observed over 1990–2020. This highlights regional contrasts between landscapes dominated by small disturbance events and those shaped by larger ones.

Read full story: Tiny patches of deforestation drive tropical carbon loss