By Xeno
Tropical mangrove trees are better at storing carbon dioxide than most other forests, and cutting them down unleashes more greenhouse gas than deforestation elsewhere, say scientists.
Mangroves are so efficient at keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere that when they are destroyed, they release as much as 10 per cent of all emissions worldwide attributable to deforestation – even though mangroves account for just 0.7 per cent of the tropical forest area, says researchers.
Daniel Donato, of the US Agriculture Department’s Forest Service and lead author of a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience, says mangroves store two to four times the carbon that tropical rainforests do.
“Mangroves store a lot of carbon, much more so than most forests... More...
