Climate Recovery and Adaptation potential of Forests in the Tropics (CRAFT)

Start date: 1 March 2024
End date: 31 December 2028
Funder: UK Research and Innovation
Value: £1.44 million
Partners and collaborators: Dr E. Robertson at the UK Met Office. Dr D. Kelley at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Dr L. Garcia-Carreras at Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Dr S. Saatchi at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA. Dr G. Duveiller at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Germany. Dr A. Staal at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Dr M. Adami at the National Institute for Space Research, Brazil.
Primary investigator: Dr Jess Baker

Landscape image of forests and sky

Tropical forests are globally critical centres of biodiversity and carbon storage. These forests face serious threat from deforestation – nearly 97% of permanent forest loss in the past decade has occurred in the tropics (FAO, 2020). Innovative solutions to reduce tropical deforestation are urgently required. International climate treaties recognise forests as an essential resource for mitigating global climate change through carbon capture and storage, but their role in helping humans adapt to rising global temperatures has not yet been assessed.

Replacing tropical forests with alternative land types disrupts regular water and energy exchanges between the land and the atmosphere, causing higher surface temperatures and changes to the water cycle. These changes exacerbate climate change-driven warming and droughts with severe consequences for human health and crop productivity. Forests could alleviate the damaging effects of global climate change by cooling surrounding non-forest landscapes, reducing the frequency of heatwaves and sustaining inland water supplies. However, the potential for tropical forests to offer such ecosystem-based adaptation, and the dependence of climate services on forest type and degradation status, have not been evaluated.

CRAFT will deliver the first in-depth assessment of the local and regional climate benefits provided by intact and regenerating tropical forests. The project will combine the latest satellite and ground-based measurements, air-mass trajectory modelling and state-of-the-art numerical models to accurately quantify how tropical forests interact with climate at varying spatial scales. Advances in understanding will inform the development of the UK Earth System Model to derive improved predictions of how alternative tropical land-use pathways will influence future climate at regional and global scales. Results will lead to a step-change in how forests are valued, focus motivations for their preservation on local and national benefits and identify synergies between mitigation and adaptation policies.

Impact

Results will lead to a step-change in how forests are valued, focus motivations for their preservation on local and national benefits and identify synergies between mitigation and adaptation policies.