Carbon and plant biodiversity recovery

A very short post to draw attention to new research by one of our PhD students Phil Martin (with Bournemouth University) who this week was lead author of a paper published in the Royal Society's flagship biological sciences journal, Proceedings B.

The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology published a news story about the research: Carbon storage recovers more quickly than plant biodiversity in re-growing tropical forests

You can read the paper itself on the Proceedings B website (free to access until 30 November as part of the Royal Society's commitment to Open Access Week): Carbon pools recover more quickly than plant biodiversity in tropical secondary forests

On Phil's blog Ecology for a Crowded Planet, he has written an engaging and informative post giving more details about the research and why it is important: How long does tropical forest take to recover from agricultural clearance?

The photograph below by Ricardo Solar depicts an intermediate secondary forest in Paragominas, Para, Brazil and is indicative of the type of forest used in the analyses.

Photo by Ricardo Solar

Paulette Burns, Media Coordinator 

Additional information

Staff page of Philip Martin at CEH 

21 November 2013 update

Philip also published an article about his research in The Conversation on 13 November 2013