Intact tropical forests act as large carbon sinks, hence mitigating climate change. However, alarming recent studies showed that the pan-tropical intact forest carbon sink has saturated and will start declining soon. Hence, we cannot count on remaining intact tropical forests alone to halt increasing atmospheric carbon concentrations and avoid a runaway greenhouse effect scenario.
Therefore, (inter)national policy makers increasingly invest in forest restoration. This is most effective in (sub)tropical forest nations where trees grow quickly. Up to now, more than 40 countries have pledged to restore a total of more than 300 million ha of (sub)tropical forests. Recent modelling analysis predicted that this additional sink would remove 10% of residual carbon emissions, which would significantly contribute to keep global warming under 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, as targeted by the Paris Agreement. However, estimation of this additional reforestation sink relies on very few actual field data.
Therefore, this PhD aims at refining this estimate by reassessing old and generating new ground data from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The focus will be on the Yangambi and Luki Man-and-the-Biosphere (MAB) Reserves, which have acted as ‘living laboratories’ for global change studies since the colonial epoch.