Comparable biophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks on warming from tropical moist forest degradation

Tropical forests have undergone extensive deforestation and degradation during the past few decades, but the area and the carbon loss due to degradation could be larger than the losses from deforestation. Degraded forests also induce biophysical feedback on climate, as they sustain less cooling from evapotranspiration. Here we estimate the biophysical and biogeochemical temperature changes caused by tropical moist forest degradation using high-resolution remote sensing data from 2010. Degraded forests, including burned, isolated, edge and other degraded forests, account for 24.1% of the total tropical moist forest area. The land surface temperature of degraded tropical moist forests is higher than that of nearby intact forests, leading to a warming effect of 0.022 ± 0.014 °C over the tropics. The cumulative carbon deficit of degraded forests reaches 6.1 ± 2.0 PgC, equivalent to a biogeochemical warming effect of 0.026 ± 0.013 °C. Forest degradation caused by anthropogenic disturbances from 1990 to 2010 induces a daytime warming effect of 0.018 ± 0.008 °C and a carbon deficit of 2.3 ± 0.8 PgC. These values are of the same order of magnitude as those due to deforestation. Our results emphasize the importance of accounting for the combined biophysical and biogeochemical effects in mitigation pledges related to reducing forest degradation and the restoration of tropical forest. Biophysical and biogeochemical effects of forest degradation cause comparable temperature increases in tropical rainforests, according to analyses of high-resolution satellite observations.