The restoration of artificial forests are likely to be among the most effective strategy in economic growth to eliminate regional poverty, and/or the best approach to limit the rising CO2 concentrations of climate change mitigation across the globe. However, the global issue that afforestation is affecting the historical records of plants has been ignored and it should be deserved for serious concern.
In a study published in Forest Ecology and Management, researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) used the big data to map the potential artificial and natural tree coverage of the historical and revisited records of Engelhardia.
The researchers conducted a careful and detailed survey of the typical plants in tropical and subtropical Asia, Engelhardia. They evaluated the accurate records of the localities and found more than 1,000 records of Engelhardia across the most distribution regions. Almost 46 % of the recorded localities where the plants historically existed were vanished. During the field investigations, they found that many recorded localities have been transferred to artificial forests.
After the robust data and analyses, their results demonstrate that the artificial forests have greatly caused the widespread deficiency in plant collections. This finding has serious implications for the disappearance of historical specimen records of plant collections.
Their results highlighted that the boosting of artificial forests has slowed down the climate mitigation through global tree restoration. However, the attention for the artificial forests impacted on the disappearance on the in situ species is urgent.
“Although the climate change and economic growth get benefits from the restoration of artificial forests, the benefits are inadequate when the accurate records in plant collections are considered for the plant diversity. We thus have to emphasize the passive factors of artificial forests that the recorded species disappearance and/or shifts of the biodiversity patterns are blinded by the bright of the afforestation,” said MENG Honghu of XTBG.
Contact
MENG Honghu Ph.D
Center for Integrative Conservation, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Menglun, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
E-mail: menghonghu@xtbg.ac.cn
The afforestation is affecting the widespread deficiency in plant collections. (Image by ZHANG Yu)
