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Published Online October 20, 2005
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1117682

Reports

Submitted on July 20, 2005
Accepted on October 13, 2005

Species Loss and Aboveground Carbon Storage in a Tropical Forest

Daniel E. Bunker 1*, Fabrice DeClerck 2, Jason C. Bradford 3, Robert K. Colwell 4, Ivette Perfecto 5, Oliver L. Phillips 6, Mahesh Sankaran 7, Shahid Naeem 1

1 Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
2 Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
3 Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO, USA.
4 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA.
5 School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
6 Earth and Biosphere Institute, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.
7 Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Daniel E. Bunker , E-mail: deb37{at}columbia.edu

Tropical forest biodiversity is declining, but the resulting impacts on key ecosystem services, such as carbon storage and sequestration, remain unknown. We assessed the influence of tropical tree species loss on carbon storage by simulating 18 possible extinction scenarios within a well-studied 50-hectare tropical forest plot in Panama containing 227 tree species. Among extinction scenarios, aboveground carbon stocks varied more than 600%, and biological insurance varied more than 400%. These results indicate that future carbon storage in tropical forests will be influenced strongly by future species composition.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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From the Cover: Fish extinctions alter nutrient recycling in tropical freshwaters.
P. B. McIntyre, L. E. Jones, A. S. Flecker, and M. J. Vanni (2007)
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)