The future of Southeast Asia’s forests

While Southeast Asia’s forests play important roles in biodiversity conservation and global carbon (C) balance, the region is also a deforestation hotspot. Here, we consider the five shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) to portray a range of plausible futures for the region’s forests, employing a state-of-the-art land change modelling procedure and remotely sensed data. We find that by 2050 under the worst-case scenario, SSP 3 (regional rivalry/a rocky road), the region’s forests would shrink by 5.2 million ha. The region’s aboveground forest carbon stock (AFCS) would decrease by 790 Tg C, 21% of which would be due to old-growth forest loss. Conversely, under the best-case scenario, SSP 1 (sustainability/taking the green road), the region is projected to gain 19.6 million ha of forests and 1651 Tg C of AFCS. The choice of the pathway is thus critical for the future of the region’s forests and their ecosystem functions and services.

ESTOQUE Ronald;  OOBA Makoto;  AVITABILE Valerio;  HIJIOKA Yasuaki;  DASGUPTA Rajarshi;  TOGAWA Takuya;  MURAYAMA Yuji; 

2019-05-14

NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP

JRC115865

2041-1723 (online),   

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09646-4,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC115865,   

10.1038/s41467-019-09646-4 (online),