Publications by authors named "Serge K Begne"

Article Synopsis
  • * A study analyzing 44 montane sites across 12 African countries reveals that the average aboveground live tree biomass carbon (AGC) stock is 149.4 megagrams of carbon per hectare, which is higher than similar forests in the Neotropics and above default values set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
  • * Despite this carbon richness, African montane forests face threats, having lost about 0.8 million hectares of old-growth forest since 2000, emphasizing the need for conservation efforts to protect
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The responses of tropical forests to environmental change are critical uncertainties in predicting the future impacts of climate change. The positive phase of the 2015-2016 El Niño Southern Oscillation resulted in unprecedented heat and low precipitation in the tropics with substantial impacts on the global carbon cycle. The role of African tropical forests is uncertain as their responses to short-term drought and temperature anomalies have yet to be determined using on-the-ground measurements.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study highlights the uncertainty in how tropical forests' carbon storage responds to climate change, particularly the effects of long-term drying and warming.
  • Analysis of 590 permanent plots across the tropics finds that maximum temperature significantly reduces aboveground biomass, affecting carbon storage more in hotter forests.
  • The results indicate that tropical forests have greater resilience to temperature changes than short-term studies suggest, emphasizing the need for forest protection and climate stabilization for long-term adaptation.
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Article Synopsis
  • Structurally intact tropical forests contributed significantly to global carbon sequestration in the 1990s and early 2000s, absorbing about 15% of human-caused CO2 emissions.
  • A study comparing African and Amazonian forests found that while African forests have maintained a stable carbon sink over three decades, Amazonian forests are experiencing a long-term decline in carbon absorption due to increased tree mortality.
  • Recent trends suggest a potential increase in carbon losses in African forests post-2010, indicating that both regions are facing different challenges regarding their carbon sinks and may experience declines in the future.
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Article Synopsis
  • Understanding how forests store carbon is important for climate change!
  • Scientists studied the age of carbon in different parts of African tropical forests and found that smaller understory trees hold carbon longer than taller trees!
  • This means we need to pay more attention to all parts of the forest for better conservation and carbon tracking!
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Tropical forests are global centres of biodiversity and carbon storage. Many tropical countries aspire to protect forest to fulfil biodiversity and climate mitigation policy targets, but the conservation strategies needed to achieve these two functions depend critically on the tropical forest tree diversity-carbon storage relationship. Assessing this relationship is challenging due to the scarcity of inventories where carbon stocks in aboveground biomass and species identifications have been simultaneously and robustly quantified.

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Background: Traits of non-dominant mixed-forest tree species and their synergies for successful co-occurrence in monodominant Gilbertiodendron dewevrei forest have not yet been investigated. Here we compared the tree species diversity of the monodominant forest with its adjacent mixed forest and then determined which fitness proxies and life history traits of the mixed-forest tree species were most associated with successful co-existence in the monodominant forest.

Methodology/principal Findings: We sampled all trees (diameter in breast height [dbh]≥10 cm) within 6×1 ha topographically homogenous areas of intact central African forest in SE Cameroon, three independent patches of G.

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We report above-ground biomass (AGB), basal area, stem density and wood mass density estimates from 260 sample plots (mean size: 1.2 ha) in intact closed-canopy tropical forests across 12 African countries. Mean AGB is 395.

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