Human activity has caused some rainforests to switch from being a solution for climate change, to a source of it, a new study has found.

The study, published in the scientific journal Nature, discovered that Africa’s forests and woody savannas, which “historically acted as a carbon sink, removing atmospheric carbon and storing it as biomass” made “a critical transition from a carbon sink to a carbon source between 2010 and 2017”.

Using satellite data, researchers at the National Centre for Earth Observation at the Universities of Leicester, Sheffield and Edinburgh in the United Kingdom were able to track the changes in the amount of carbon being absorbed by trees and woody areas.

“The implications of this shift are profound. Africa’s forests and woodlands have historically served as a c

See Full Page