Tropical forests account for more than 50 % of the world's carbon sink, but climate change threatens to alter the carbon balance of these ecosystems.

New research by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and colleagues at Colorado State University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute finds that warming and drying soils in tropical forests may increase soil carbon vulnerability by increasing the degradation of older carbon. The research appears in Nature .

"These findings suggest that both warming and drying, by accelerating carbon loss from older soils or reducing fresh carbon incorporation, will intensify soil carbon losses and negatively affect carbon storage in tropical forests under climate change," said LLNL scientist Karis McFarlane. , the main author of the paper. (Anne M. Stark, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, more at phys.org)