Articles | Volume 13, issue 4
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1681-2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-13-1681-2021
Review article
 | 
26 Apr 2021
Review article |  | 26 Apr 2021

Carbon emissions and removals from forests: new estimates, 1990–2020

Francesco N. Tubiello, Giulia Conchedda, Nathan Wanner, Sandro Federici, Simone Rossi, and Giacomo Grassi

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Cited articles

FAO: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2015, How are the world's forests changing? Second edition, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, Italy, available at: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i4793e.pdf (last access: January 2021), FAO, Rome, 2016. 
FAO: Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020: Main Report, available at: http://www.fao.org/documents/card/en/c/ca9825en (last access: January 2021), FAO, Rome, 2020. 
FAO: FAOSTAT Emissions – Land Use, Forest Land, available at: http://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/GF (last access: January 2021), FAO, Rome, 2021a. 
FAO: Land statistics. Global, regional and country trends, 1990–2018. FAOSTAT Analytical Brief Series No. 15. Rome, Italy. Available at: http://www.fao.org/3/cb2860en/cb2860en.pdf (last access: January 2021), FAO, Rome, 2021b. 
FAO and UN: System of Environmental-Economic Accounting for Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (SEEA AFF), Rome, https://doi.org/10.4060/ca7735en, 2020. 
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This paper presents the first estimates of forest carbon fluxes (1990–2020) based on the new Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2020. We document for the first time in the literature forest carbon fluxes for the last decade 2011–2020. Results show that carbon losses from net forest conversion (3.1 billion tonnes of CO2) were counterbalanced by carbon gains on forest land (−3.3 billion tonnes of CO2), resulting in the world's forests acting overall as a small carbon sink in the past decade.
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