Larger forest patches have greater per-area productivity
Yibiao Zou, Gabriel Reuben Smith, Thomas Lauber, Joe Wan, Haozhi Ma, Noel Gorelick, Constantin M. Zohner, Thomas W. Crowther · 2026
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Description
Yibiao Zou and co-authors show that big forests grow wood faster per hectare than small patches in this 2026 study. Chopping forests into fragments is known to cost carbon when trees vanish. The team asked whether the trees that remain also grow more slowly, an added hidden cost.
They measured seventeen million forest patches across the mainland United States. A hectare inside a vast forest grew about thirty-eight percent more than a lone hectare under like conditions. Working backward, they estimate that today's fragmentation already cuts the country's forest growth by about fourteen percent. Patch size predicted growth better than slope or soil in their models. Coarser global data showed the same pattern on other continents. The authors argue that climate plans should count fragmentation itself, not just the area of forest left standing.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Yibiao Zou, Gabriel Reuben Smith, Thomas Lauber, Joe Wan, Haozhi Ma, Noel Gorelick, Constantin M. Zohner, Thomas W. Crowther |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 48 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |