The DOI matches its Crossref record; 33 of the 34 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation
Open accessAbstract
The prevention of deforestation and promotion of afforestation have often been cited as strategies to slow global warming. Deforestation releases CO 2 to the atmosphere, which exerts a warming influence on Earth's climate. However, biophysical effects of deforestation, which include changes in land surface albedo, evapotranspiration, and cloud cover also affect climate. Here we present results from several large-scale deforestation experiments performed with a three-dimensional coupled global carbon-cycle and climate model. These simulations were performed by using a fully three-dimensional model representing physical and biogeochemical interactions among land, atmosphere, and ocean. We find that global-scale deforestation has a net cooling influence on Earth's climate, because the warming carbon-cycle effects of deforestation are overwhelmed by the net cooling associated with changes in albedo and evapotranspiration. Latitude-specific deforestation experiments indicate that afforestation projects in the tropics would be clearly beneficial in mitigating global-scale warming, but would be counterproductive if implemented at high latitudes and would offer only marginal benefits in temperate regions. Although these results question the efficacy of mid- and high-latitude afforestation projects for climate mitigation, forests remain environmentally valuable resources for many reasons unrelated to climate.
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“Furthermore, deforestation in the middle–high latitudes might have amplified Little Ice Age cooling by exposing more snow and increasing surface albedo (107, 110, 111).”
From Used planet: a global history (2013) · cites this paper as [110]
In the citing paper
“Modeled regional and global climate responses to simulated (107, 110, 111) and reconstructed historical land cover changes over the past century (112) and millennium (113) generally agree that anthropogenic deforestation drives biogeophysical cooling at higher latitudes and warming in low latitudes and suggest that biogeochemical impacts tend to exceed biogeophysical effects (113).”
From Used planet: a global history (2013) · cites this paper as [110]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Bala, G., Caldeira, K., Wickett, M., Phillips, T. J., Lobell, D. B., Delire, C., & Mirin, A.
- Affiliations
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US)
- Department of Global Ecology, Carnegie Institution, Stanford, CA 94305; and
- Institut des Sciences de l'Evolution de Montpellier (FR)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2007-04-17
- Volume
- 104
- Issue
- 16
- Pages
- 6550-6555
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC1871823
- OpenAlex
- W1965323106
- Cited by
- 957
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 41 · 2024: 49 · 2023: 60 · 2022: 52 · 2021: 53 · 2020: 53 · 2019: 48 · 2018: 58 · 2017: 35 · 2016: 41 · 2015: 52 · 2014: 67 · 2013: 58 · 2012: 54
- FWCI
- 37.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2007-06-05)
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy (W-7405, -7405-ENG-48)
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (W-7405-ENG 48, -7405-Eng-48)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Climate Change Policy and Economics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate Change and Geoengineering
- Keywords
- deforestation, afforestation, climate change mitigation, carbon cycle, surface albedo, evapotranspiration, biophysical effects, global warming
- MeSH terms
- Atmosphere, Carbon, Carbon Dioxide, Climate, Conservation of Natural Resources
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