Any tree will suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and turn it into plant tissue. But it adding a little variety has all kinds of benefits when it comes to reforestation, including the amount of carbon absorbed, according to new research.

The new insights come from one of the oldest experimental forests in a global network designed to better understand the role of tree diversity in forests. The Sardinilla experiment is set on a former jungle in Panama…Scientists chose the species to cover a range of different traits. Some grew quickly. Others more slowly. Some needed lots of direct sun. Others thrived in the shade.

…

As the researchers watched the forests grow between 2001 and 2017, they saw that the more species of trees there were, the more carbon was stored in the portion of the trees growing above ground….

…

“This is important, because in the face of climate change, the long-term carbon balance of forests will depend largely on their stability to disturbances. Diverse forests exhibit greater ecological stability and the risk that the stored carbon is released back to the atmosphere is lower than in monocultures”, said Florian Schnabel, a forest scientist at Germany’s University of Freiburg who led the Sardinilla experiment.

This is an excerpt. Read the original post here