Secondary forests, or forests that have regrown after agriculture use, only last an average of 20 years, according to a recently released scientific paper.
The finding presents a major problem for large-scale restoration policy, which often focuses on commitments to restore a certain number of hectares by a given year. But the benefits of restoration depend on those forests persisting. It takes much longer than 20 years for a secondary forest to absorb large amounts of carbon, or to provide habitat for many forest species.
The research has the longest time scale, 67 years, and the greatest special resolution, 10 meter resolution, of any studies that have looked at secondary tropical forest persistence. Two previous studies only went back as far as 1985 and used lower resolution data.
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