1NC Defo

Defo is decreasing globally and their impact is 800 years away

Bailey 14 (Ronald Bailey is a science correspondent at Reason magazine and author of Liberation
Biology, Reason Magazine, August 1, 2014, “Predictions of a Man-Made Sixth Mass Extinction
May Be Exaggerated”, http://reason.com/archives/2014/08/01/predictions-of-a-man-made-
sixth-mass-ext)

Since most species live in forests, chiefly tropical forests, we should take a look at global forest
cover trends. Happily, the deforestation rate is slowing. The Food and Agriculture
Organization's State of the World's Forests 2012 report notes that the global rate of
deforestation slowed from 0.2 percent per year between 1990 and 2000 to 0.14 percent
between 2005 and 2010. Between 2000 and 2010, a total of 130 million hectares were cut, but
78 million hectares returned to forests. So globally, forests declined on average by 5.2 million
hectares per year—at which rate, the report notes, "It will take 775 years to lose all of the
world's forests." It adds, "This would seem to provide enough time for actions to slow or stop
global deforestation." And indeed, researchers in 2006 found that more and more countries
are passing through a "forest transition" in which their forest area starts expanding. Roger
Sedjo, a forest ecologist at Resources for the Future, predicts that by 2050 most of the world's
industrial wood will be grown on forest plantations covering only 5 to 10 percent of the
extent of today's global forests. One dark blot on forest restoration trends is biofuel mandates
in rich countries, which have spurred tropical countries to chop down forests to grow palm oil to
produce biodiesel. By one estimate, 87 percent of the deforestation in Malaysia and 118 percent
in Indonesia occurred as result of expanding palm oil plantations.

No terminal impact
Lomborg 1 (Bjørn, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, Danish author, academic, “The
Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World,” Cambridge University Press,
originally published in Danish in 1998)

There are two primary reasons for viewing the tropical forests as a vital resource. In the 1970s
we were told that rainforests were the lungs of the Earth. Even in July 2000, WWF argued for
saving the Brazilian Amazon since “the Amazon region has been called the lungs of the world.”
But this is a myth. True enough, plants produce oxygen by means of photosynthesis, but when
they die and decompose, precisely the same amount of oxygen is consumed. Therefore, forests
in equilibrium (where trees grow but old trees fall over, keeping the total biomass
approximately constant) neither produce nor consume oxygen in net terms. Even if all plants, on
land as well as at sea, were killed off and then decomposed, the process would consume less
than 1 percent of the atmosphere’s oxygen. The other argument in favor of preserving the
forests is to conserve the globe’s profusion of species, or the biodiversity. We will look into this
argument in chapter 23. In short it can be said that over the next 50 years we will not lose 50
percent of all species as claimed by many, but more like 0.7 percent. One cannot generally argue
that these species constitute an actual economic resource (along the lines that they may
constitute new and potentially vital medicines) but we may well hold moral reasons for their
preservation. At the same time, numerous false impressions exist regarding the condition of our
forests. Most people believe that over the last 50 years we have wiped out large swathes of
rainforest, and perhaps temperate forest as well. Statements such as the one from the WWF
quoted above naturally help to cement this idea. But as we have pointed out, there has not
been a fall in global forest area during this period. On the other hand, Europe got rid of a large
proportion of its forest by the end of the Middle Ages in order to make room for farming and
bigger populations.
 2NC Defo – SQ Solves
Global cooperation is restoring forest landscapes and reducing deforestation
Kasnoff 16, (consultant with a number of conservation organizations including the American
Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) and the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, Global
Effort to Restore Degraded Forests, 6-14-16, www.bagheera.com/journal/global-effort-to-
restore-degraded-forests.htm)

Led by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), TRI will be implemented in
partnership with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). GEF programmatic support for this initiative is
US$ 54 million. In addition, TRI anticipates co-financing contributions in excess of US$ 200
million from other donors. The TRI program will be implemented in Cameroon, Central African
Republic, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sao
Tome and Principe and Tanzania. Country projects will be linked by a Global Learning, Finance
and Partnerships project, which will provide knowledge, tools and policy support to strengthen
coherent delivery of the initiative. “The Restoration Initiative will generate action on forest
landscape restoration (FLR),” says Stewart Maginnis, Global Director, Nature-Based Solutions,
“helping to reverse the land and forest degradation that undermine efforts to eliminate poverty,
hunger and biodiversity loss in many parts of the world today and the ability of communities to
adapt to the impacts of climate change.” TRI will work at multiple levels – identifying relevant
national policy and institutional solutions and aligning them with FLR commitments, while
supporting the implementation of restoration and land management projects on the ground
that are gender sensitive and responsive to the needs of local communities. Importantly, IUCN
and its partners will ensure the sustainability of project outcomes by strengthening local and
national institutions through access to a broad array of resources and promoting South-South
learning and cooperation. A key component of TRI will be the development of models for
investment. “We will only be able to achieve the Bonn Challenge goals through collaboration at
all levels and across sectors. That is the strength of TRI – its potential to bring together different
players in FLR and create a space for collaboration and shared learning,” stressed Maginnis.
Strengthened restoration and improved land management practices facilitated by TRI will
contribute to achieving national and sub-national priorities such as food security and jobs, as
well as international goals related to climate change, biodiversity and land degradation
neutrality. The Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR) has identified 2
billion hectares around the world – an area larger than South America – where opportunities
for restoration may be found. Although restoration initiatives are underway in different regions,
a concerted focus is needed to bolster these efforts. TRI will bring together expertise from
several multilateral organisations with a range of technical partners and support from
multiple financing partners to put FLR into practice at scale in 10 countries with significant
restoration potential.

There’s substantial momentum against defo now – data confirms

Webb 16, (founder of Innovation Forum, a sustainability focused research, publishing and
events business. I've also been a lecturer on Corporate Responsibility at Kings College London
and at Birkbeck, University of London for eight years, Some musings on progress around
deforestation in business supply chains, July, sustainablesmartbusiness.com/2016/07/some-
musings-on-progress-around-deforestation-in-business-supply-chains/)

Our brief was to discuss progress made on tacking deforestation in corporate supply chains. I
made a few remarks in an attempt to offer some challenge to current thinking, and to think
about where we need to go next. So here they are below. I hope they might be of some interest
to readers. When it comes to corporate activities on preventing deforestation, we must
recognize the progress made since 2011 in particular. I refer to 2011 given that seemed to me to
be a seminal year, more on that here. I recall at our first business conference on the topic in late
2014 one campaign protagonist noted that: “if you’d told me two years ago we’d be sitting here
having this level of conversation I’d have asked what you were smoking”. Our forthcoming
event in Singapore reflects this. The recent Forest Trends/Supply Change data again absolutely
reflects that progress. The progress, however, is so far clearly more about policies and targets
than on the ground performance.

No impact to deforestation – best, most recent science

Yi Liu 15, and Albert Van Dijk and Pep Canadell, 3/31/2015 Yi Liu, ARC DECRA Fellow in Earth
Observation at UNSW Australia, Albert Van Dijk Professor of Water Science and Management,
Fenner School of Environment & Society at Australian National University, Pep Canadell
Executive director, Global Carbon Project at CSIRO “Despite Decades Of Deforestation, The
Earth Is Getting Greener”, http://www.iflscience.com/environment/despite-decades-
deforestation-earth-getting-greener

While the news coming out of forests is often dominated by deforestation and habitat loss, research
published today in Nature
Climate Change shows that the world has actually got greener over the past decade. Despite
ongoing deforestation in South America and Southeast Asia, we found that the decline in these regions

has been offset by recovering forests outside the tropics, and new growth in the drier savannas
and shrublands of Africa and Australia. Plants absorb around a quarter of the carbon dioxide that people release into the
atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. With a greening globe, more plants may mean more absorption of carbon dioxide.

If so, this will slow but not stop climate change. However, questions remain over how long plants can keep pace with our
increasing emissions in a warmer climate. Measuring Carbon In Plants We studied how plants and vegetation are faring by determining the amount of
carbon stored in living plant mass (or “biomass”) above the ground. We developed a new technique to map changes in vegetation biomass using
satellite measurements of changes in the radio-frequency radiation emitted from the Earth’s surface, a technique called passive microwave remote
sensing. The radiation varies with temperature, soil moisture and the shielding of water in vegetation biomass above the ground. We extracted this
vegetation information from several satellites and merged them into one time series covering the last two decades. This allowed us to track global
changes in biomass from mo month, something that was not possible before. For the period 2003-12, we found that the total amount of vegetation
above the ground has increased by about 4 billion tonnes of carbon. Still Losing Rainforests, But Gaining Forests
Elsewhere Our global analysis shows losses of vegetation in many regions, particularly at the frontiers of deforestation in the tropics of South
America and Southeast Asia. As expected, the greatest declines have been in the so-called “Arc of Deforestation” on the southeastern edge of the vast
Amazon forests. In Southeast Asia we found the most widespread declines in the Indonesian provinces of Sumatra and Kalimantan - the Indonesian part
of Borneo. However, we found that these rainforest losses have been offset by increases in biomass in other
parts of the world. For example, forests have spontaneously regrown on farmland abandoned after the fall of communism in Russia and
neighbouring countries, while large-scale tree planting projects in China have measurably added to the

global biomass. This roughly offset half of the carbon loss by tropical deforestation. We also found
unexpectedly large vegetation increases in savannas and shrublands of Australia, Africa, and South
America. Previous analyses have focused on closed forests and did not measure this increase . Is
Australia Getting Greener? On average, Australia is “greener” today than it was two decades ago. This is despite
ongoing land clearing, urbanisation and the recent droughts in some parts of the country. However, the increase in vegetation has not been uniform.
The largest increases are in northern Australia, with lesser increases in southern Australia and a small decrease in southeastern Australia. These
vegetation trends seem to be mainly explained by rainfall patterns: northern Australia has been getting wetter and southeast Australia dryer. This
pattern is predicted to continue according to the most recent climate change projections from the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. Australian
vegetation growth generally responds strongly to rainfall variations. More variability and an apparently increasing frequency of extreme El Niño and La
Niña events due to climate change would create stronger boom-bust cycles in Australia’s vegetation. Apart from the effect of rainfall patterns, our
study also agreed with other studies observing a gradual greening trend for the past two decades, even where there was no change or even a small
decrease in rainfall. This has been ascribed mainly to the increasing number of trees and shrubs growing on semi-arid grasslands. These plants are more
efficient water users than other plants such as grasses. With the increased atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel emissions, they
are able to absorb more carbon from the atmosphere without using more water. More Vegetation Will Slow But Not Prevent
Climate Change The world’s vegetation plays an important role in slowing down climate change. About a quarter of all carbon emissions from
human activities are removed by terrestrial vegetation, with the size of the carbon land sink increasing over time. However, it remains to be

seen how the increased climate variability that accompanies climate change will affect this terrestrial “carbon
sink” in future. This is particularly true for seasonally dry ecosystems that experience fires, such as Australia’s savannas, where a single fire event can
easily remove the carbon stored in plant biomass over many previous years. The future interaction between climate variability, vegetation and fire is
difficult to predict and remains the focus of intense research. Overall, our study provides more direct evidence of the global increase of vegetation
growth and the terrestrial carbon sink than previous studies, with unprecedented geographical attribution and year-to-year changes. With terrestrial
vegetation removing about a quarter of the carbon emissions from human activities and the global oceans removing another quarter, this means that
half of our CO2 emissions remains in the atmosphere. Therefore, stabilising concentration of CO2 in
the atmosphere and the consequent impact on the climate system will still require large
reductions of global fossil fuel emissions.
 2NC Defo – AT Amazon
Squo solves Amazon/global deforestation
Tollefson 13 JEFF TOLLEFSON is a correspondent for Nature, where he covers energy, climate,
and environmental issue. “A Light in the Forest: Brazil's fight to save the Amazon and climate-
change diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 92, Issue 2, March/April, EBSCO

But in recent years, good news has emerged from the Amazon. Brazil has dramatically slowed
the destruction of its rain forests, reducing the rate of deforestation by 83 percent since 2004,
primarily by enforcing land-use regulations, creating new protected areas, and working to maintain

the rule of law in the Amazon. At the same time, Brazil has become a test case for a controversial international climate-change prevention strategy known as REDD,
short for "reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation," which places a monetary value on the carbon stored in forests. Under such a system, developed
countries can pay developing countries to protect their own forests, thereby offsetting the developed countries' emissions at home. Brazil's preliminary experience with REDD
suggests that, in addition to offering multiple benefits to forest dwellers (human and otherwise), the model can be cheap and fast: Brazil has done more to reduce emissions
than any other country in the world in recent years, without breaking the bank. The REDD model remains a work in progress. In Brazil and other places where elements of REDD
have been applied, the funding has yet to reach many of its intended beneficiaries, and institutional reforms have been slow to develop. This has contributed to a rural backlash

Brazil can consolidate its early gains,

against the new enforcement measures in the Brazilian Amazon -- a backlash that the government is still struggling to contain. But if

could pave the

build consensus around a broader vision for development, and follow through with a program to overhaul the economies of its rainforest regions, it

way for a new era of environmental governance across the tropics. For the first time, perhaps, it is
possible to contemplate an end to the era of large-scale human deforestation.
 1nc Inev
Deforestation inevitable
Joshi 15 (APOORVA- Monogabay staff writer, “Brazilian Amazon nears deforestation threshold
past which wildlife may crash, says study”, https://news.mongabay.com/2015/05/brazilian-
amazon-nears-deforestation-threshold-past-which-wildlife-may-crash-says-study/)

A study on the impact of forest loss on biodiversity, recently published in the journal Conservation Biology, shows
that one-third of the Brazilian Amazon is headed toward or has just passed a threshold of forest
cover beyond which species loss accelerates and is more damaging. The study, led by Dr. Jose Manual Ochoa-Quintero with the University of
Cambridge, is one among few large area studies that have been carried out. It is also one of the

first studies to map the impact of deforestation on biodiversity across entire regions of the Amazon. By
measuring the loss of some dominant species of mammals and birds and using the results as indicators, the researchers found that for every 10 percent
of forest that is lost, one to two major species are wiped out. This continues until the forest cover reaches a threshold of 43 percent. Below that, the
rate of biodiversity loss escalates and anywhere between two and eight major species disappear per 10 percent forest loss. “This is not just a result of
overall loss of habitat, but also reduced connectivity between remaining forest fragments, causing species to hunt and mate in ever-decreasing circles,”
said Ochoa-Quintero, who is also the lead author of the paper. “This fragmentation may be the key element of the ‘threshold’ tipping point for
biodiversity.” Current Brazilian law, called the Forest Code, “is the primary mechanism for protecting native forest and associated biodiversity in
farmlands in the Amazon basin,” the study says. It is applied at the farm scale and requires at least 80 percent of native vegetation to be retained on
farmlands. However, this law is rarely complied with or enforced. To prevent untold regional loss of biodiversity in areas that slip below the 43 percent
forest cover threshold, the researchers recommend a shift in focus. “These results support the need for a major shift in the scale at which
environmental legislation is applied in Brazil and the tropics,” Ochoa-Quintero said. “We need to move from thinking in terms of compliance at a farm
scale to compliance at a landscape scale if we are to save as many species as we can from extinction.” With
a vast area to cover, the
researchers divided their study region into 1,223 landscapes of 10,000 square kilometers, then
selected 31 as representative of the spectrum of forest cover across the region. Twenty-seven of
these landscapes were on private land while four were protected areas. “In total we spent three
years to carry out this project from conception to data analysis and writing up,” Ochoa-Quintero
told mongabay.com. “We spent approximately one year in the field plus two years to analyze
the data set and the results.” The study defines the highest priority landscapes – about 33 percent of the land in the region – as those
that either dipped below the 43 percent forest cover threshold in 2010 or are expected to in the next 20 years. It says these areas will suffer between
31 to 44 percent species loss by the year 2030. The researchers modeled how deforestation occurring at current rates might affect how many species
occupy a given area in the Brazilian state of Rondônia. Their results revealed that landscape-level species loss mirrored forest cover loss and that by the
year 2030 only 22 percent of landscapes would likely be able to sustain at least 75 percent of the 35 focal species that were sampled. These species
included medium-sized mammals and birds falling within various IUCN Red List categories like the red howler monkey (Alouatta seniculus) and Spix’s
guan (Penelope jacquacu) classified as Least Concern, the Vulnerable giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), the Endangered white-bellied monkey
(Ateles chamek) and the dark-winged trumpeter (Psophia viridis), and the Near Threatened jaguar (Panthera onca) and harpy eagle (Harpia harpyja). All
these species are native to the region that was studied – an area in the northern half of the Brazilian Amazon state of Rondônia in the interfluvium of
the Mamore-Madeira and Ji-Parana rivers that amounts to over three million hectares of land. The study also says that similar results were found in
other landscape-scale studies carried out in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest, as well as in Australia and Finland. Expanding and encroaching agriculture –
from beef to soy – in recent decades means that almost 41 percent of original forest in the study region (approximately two million hectares) has been
lost over just the last 40 years. The study also says that with a growing and more affluent human population to feed, at current rates, the number of
large-scale landscapes (more than 10,000 square kilometers in size) in the Amazon that fall below the species loss threshold will almost double by 2030.
Researchers say that protected areas (PAs) can counter agricultural expansion. However, the size limits on plots that can be set aside for PAs on public
land means that the success of biodiversity conservation depends also on protecting native vegetation on private land. “In addition to the effects of
forest area and fragmentation, the degradation of remaining fragments due to correlated disturbances from logging and fire, as well as unsustainable
hunting and extraction of other resources, can also threaten the future of species that depend on relatively undisturbed tracts of forest,” the authors
write. The
highest level of deforestation, the study says, is likely to occur farther north in landscapes with high
forest cover where new infrastructure and development projects like roads are anticipated.
These will increase accessibility and, as a likely consequence, deforestation. Researchers found that landscapes with over 70 percent forest
cover were largely located inside protected areas and far from major paved roads. The authors say that their research may help identify clear priorities
for conservation interventions based on differences in current forest cover levels and expected rates of deforestation. They also believe that a similar
approach can also be useful in restoration projects to define native vegetation cover targets on the basis of a threshold of species loss. “Avoiding
deforestation and focussing reforestation in the areas that teeter on the species loss threshold will be the most direct and cost-effective way to prevent
further species loss in the Amazon region,” Ochoa-Quintero said. “The reduction of deforestation along this area, in addition to law enforcement, may
be crucial to reduce habitat loss and keep most of the sampled species.”
 2nc Inev - amazon
Amazons about to disappear- triggers all their impacts
Fraser 16 (Barabra-science magazine author, interviewing biologist Thomas Lovejoy of George
Mason University, “Q&A: Amazon ‘tipping point’ may be closer than we think, Thomas Lovejoy
says” 8/18, http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/qa-amazon-tipping-point-may-be-
closer-we-think-thomas-lovejoy-says)

The Amazon faces a new wave of exploitation, as Brazil, Peru, and other Amazonian countries look to
the vast expanse of forests and rivers to supply expanding energy and natural resource needs. Hundreds of
infrastructure projects—dams, roads, railroads, pipelines, and more—are planned. But the deforestation that usually accompanies
such projects threatens biodiversity as well as the Amazon’s role as the world’s largest terrestrial carbon sink, says biologist Thomas Lovejoy of George
Mason University, Fairfax, in Virginia. Lovejoy
is one of five new U.S. science envoys appointed by the U.S.
Department of State and the White House to promote scientific collaboration between the
United States and other countries. He plans to use his new role to encourage efforts to understand the Amazon’s climate dynamics
and help prevent deforestation from tipping the region from carbon sink to net carbon emitter. He recently spoke with Science in Lima. This interview
has been edited for clarity and brevity. Q: What do you consider the
greatest threat to the Amazon? A: The intersection
between uncoordinated infrastructure and the hydrological cycle. The Amazon makes half of its own rainfall
[through evapotranspiration], and the water recycles five or six times as it crosses the basin. [Deforestation disrupts] the hydrological cycle [and] is
going to have effects on the weather system. With
the droughts of 2005, 2010, and the current one—I think
we're seeing flickers of the potential tipping point. Q: Do we know where the tipping point from
carbon sink to source will be? A: One estimate is at about 40% deforestation. That doesn't include other impacts on the
hydrological cycle from climate change itself and the widespread use of fire. Fire not only burns the forest, it also dries it out and makes it more

vulnerable. I think it's reasonable to think the tipping point is around 20% deforestation .
 1NC Defo Good
Global deforestation cools the planet---albedo outweighs CO2 warming.
Bala et al. 7—Govindasamy Bala a Physicist at the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory and a PhD in Oceanic Science from McGill // K. Caldeira an atmospheric scientist
at the Carnegie Institution for Science and a PhD in atmospheric sciences from NYU
[“Combined climate and carbon-cycle effects of large-scale deforestation,” Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 104, No. 16, p. 6550–6555, Emory Libraries]

Deforestation affects the global climate both by releasing the carbon stored in the living plants and soils, and by altering the
physical properties of the planetary surface. Deforestation exerts
a warming influence by (i) adding CO2
to the atmosphere, (ii) eliminating the possible increased carbon storage in trees as a result
of future CO2 fertilization, and (iii) decreasing evapotranspiration, particularly in the tropics (1–6).
However, deforestation also exerts a cooling influence by (iv) decreasing the surface
albedo, particularly in seasonally snow-covered high latitudes (7–10). We will refer to the first two
climate effects that are mediated by changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide content as ‘‘carbon-cycle effects’’ and refer to the
other two climate effects of forests as ‘‘biophysical effects.’’

Because CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere, carbon-cycle effects are manifested
globally , but biophysical effects are most strongly felt at regional scales. Although the carbon-cycle effects have been taken
into account in the promotion of afforestation as a climate change mitigation strategy, the biophysical effects of land-cover
change have been largely ignored (11). The investigation of the combined carbon-cycle and climate effects of deforestation on
the global climate is the subject of this paper.

The relative importance of carbon-cycle and albedo effects can be quantified in terms of radiative forcing (7), but the
complexity of the climate response to changes in hydrological cycle challenges the application of such a metric (12) to changes
in evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration changes trigger atmospheric water vapor, cloud, and lapse-rate changes that
produce local and global temperature changes. Previous studies have shown that deforestation in the tropics would decrease
evapotranspiration rates and increase sensible heat fluxes, resulting in regionally decreased precipitation and increased
surface temperature (1–3, 5, 13, 14)

Past studies have investigated the biophysical effects of deforestation in specific climatic zones (1–5, 8, 13, 15), of global
deforestation (16–19), and the combined biophysical and carbon-cycle effects of deforestation at different latitudes by using
simple models (7, 20–22). Here, we
employ the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory INCCA
(Integrated Climate and Carbon) model (23, 24) to investigate transient carbon/ climate
interactions from year 2000 to 2150. Our study investigates the combined climate and
carbon-cycle effects of deforestation in a fully interactive three-dimensional climate
model that incorporates complex submodels of vegetation dynamics and terrestrial and
oceanic components of the carbon cycle (23–25).
Results

Atmospheric CO2 content is greater in the Global deforestation experiment by 381 ppmv because of both the release of carbon
stored in trees in the early 21st century and the loss of CO2 fertilization of forested ecosystems seen in the Standard
simulation (Fig. 1). Despite
higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations, the global- and annual-mean
temperature in the Global case is cooler by 0.3 K than the Standard case. Thus, on a global-mean
basis, the warming carbon-cycle effects of deforestation are overwhelmed by the cooling
biophysical effects .

Relative to the Standard case, the atmospheric CO2 concentration is higher by 299, 110, and
5 ppmv in the Tropical, Temperate, and Boreal cases. The global-mean temperature
differences relative to the Standard case in year 2100 in the Tropical, Temperate, and Boreal
experiments are 0.7 K, 0.04 K, and 0.8 K, respectively (Fig. 1), implying that the combined
carbon-cycle and biophysical effects from tropical, temperate, and boreal deforestation are, respectively, net
warming, nearzero temperature change, and net cooling. These latitude-band experiments thus suggest that projects
in the tropics promoting afforestation are likely to slow down global warming, but such projects would offer only little to no
climate benefits when implemented in temperate regions and would be counterproductive, from a climate-
perspective, at higher latitudes .
The linear sum of the area-weighted global-mean temperature change over all of the latitude-band experiments is 0.1 K in the
year 2100. This value is close to the corresponding 0.3 K temperature change of the Global deforestation simulation,
suggesting a near-linear behavior of the large-scale climate system despite the many nonlinear processes represented by the
INCCA model. The linear sum is slightly larger because, in the latitude-band experiments, our dynamic vegetation model
allows the forests to expand in the regions that are not deforested (23, 26), and forests have lower albedo and
absorb more solar radiation than grasses. The presence of trees in the latitude-band deforestation experiments
and the consequent higher CO2 fertilization causes the linear sum of CO2 changes from the Tropical, Temperate, and Boreal
experiments to be lower than that of the Global case by 67 ppmv in year 2100.

Because the linear sum of the temperature response from latitude-band experiments is approximately equal to that of the
Global case (Fig. 1), we focus our analysis on our global-scale deforestation simulation for brevity. The removal of forests in
the Global case results in an atmospheric CO2 concentration at year 2100 that is 381 ppmv greater than in the Standard
simulation (1,113 vs. 732 ppmv; Fig. 1). In the Standard A2 scenario, 1,790 PgC carbon is emitted to the atmosphere over the
21st century (Fig. 2). By year 2100, the terrestrial biosphere in the Global deforestation experiment has 972
Pg less carbon than in the Standard case. Approximately 82% (799 PgC) of this carbon resides in the
atmosphere, with the oceans taking up the remaining 18% (173 PgC). The ocean uptake increases in the Global case (444 vs.
271 PgC in Standard) because the higher atmospheric CO2 concentration drives an increased flux of carbon into the oceans.

The spatial distribution of climate and carbon-cycle changes in the Global case for the decade centered on year 2100 is shown
in Fig. 3A. Similar to the global-mean statistics, the linear sum (Fig. 3B) of the spatial pattern of temperature response from the
latitude-specific Boreal, Temperate, and Tropical deforestation experiments (Fig. 3 C–E) is also approximately equal to that of
the Global case (Fig. 3A). This finding once
again highlights the apparent linear response of the
large-scale climate system despite the presence of many nonlinear processes.

The spatial pattern of temperature differences suggests that the

strongest cooling in the Global case is
associated with the removal of boreal forests in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes
(Fig. 3A and Table 1). The replacement of these forests by grasses and shrubs increases the

surface albedo (brightens the surface) by as much as 0.25 (Fig. 4A). This results in decreased
absorption of surface solar radiation and cooling that exceeds 6 K in some locations, despite
higher CO2 concentrations and high-latitude amplification of CO2-induced warming (27). The
albedo effect therefore dominates the climate response in the Northern Hemisphere mid-
latitudes and high latitudes. However, the magnitude of cooling due to albedo change would likely become smaller
after 2100 as the length of the snow season is reduced further; we noted a slight decrease in the surface albedo over boreal
region during the period 2010–2100.

In the tropics, however, increases in surface albedo (Fig. 4A and Table 1) do not produce as much cooling, largely due to the
changes in clouds. The removal of forests also decreases evapotranspiration (Fig. 4B), resulting in a decrease of clouds (Fig.
4C). Thus, the replacement of tropical forests with grasslands and shrublands brightens the surface, but the decrease of clouds
tends to darken the planet. These effects nearly cancel each other so that the planetary albedo at the top of the atmosphere
(Fig. 4D) changes little over tropical regions. This observation suggests that cloud feedbacks initiated by evapotranspiration
changes play a major role in determining the overall climatic impact of deforestation in the tropics.

Despite higher atmosphere CO2 concentrations, the average annual-mean surface

temperature over land in the Global deforestation experiment is cooler by 2.1 K, 1.6 K, and
0.4 K than that of the Standard experiment in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes (50°N to 90°N), mid-
latitudes (20°N to 50°N), and tropics (20°S to 20°N), respectively (Table 1). In contrast, the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitude
(50°S to 20°S) land surface warms by 0.1 K. In the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes and high latitudes, surface albedo
effects dominate, resulting in decreased net surface solar absorption and cooling. In the tropics and Southern
Hemisphere mid-latitudes, the surface albedo decrease is comparable with that in the
Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes (Table 1), but the decreases in evapotranspiration and cloudiness lead to
increases in the surface incident and absorbed solar radiation that tend to warm the surface. However, the net

biophysical effect is still cooling, and it is larger than the warming carbon-cycle effects in
the tropics, while being only slightly smaller in the Southern Hemisphere mid-latitudes (Fig.
3A).