PARIS, Dec 28 — According to a study coming from Australia, Asia’s tropical forests may be more resilient to climate change than previously thought. According to the authors, priority should be given to protecting tropical dry forests and forests at high altitudes.

There’s a lot of talk about the Amazon or boreal forests as carbon storage (carbon sink) sites... But the forests of Southeast Asia could also prove to be excellent candidates.

This is the conclusion of a study led by a researcher at the University of Sydney, demonstrating that forest areas in Southeast Asia dating back to the Last Glacial Maximum (more than 19,000 years ago) were characterized by a highly diversified mosaic of vegetation, including tropical rainforests alongside grasslands or savannah.

"Our work suggests that prioritising protection of forests above 1000 metres (‘montane forest’) alongside seasonally dry forest types could be important for preventing future ‘savannisation’ of Asia’s rainforests,” Dr Rebecca Hamilton, researcher and lead author of the study, put forth in a press release. To reach these conclusions, her team reviewed analyses from 59 paleoenvironmental sites in tropical Southeast Asia.

The aim was to determine the extent to which forests were transformed during the Last Glacial Maximum.

Pollen grains preserved in lakes show that forests continued to exist during this period, alongside savannah orgrassy plains.

According to the researchers, this type of discovery could provide evidence that mountain forests (located at altitudes of over 1,000 metres) persisted and even expanded in high-altitude regions, while lowlands underwent an evolution towards seasonally dry forests, with a "naturally grassy understorey.”

"This ‘hybrid’ open forest biome provides an alternative to the currently accepted binary ecologies for the region and yields new insights into ecological resilience for tropical forests in Southeast Asia and beyond,” concluded Dr Hamilton’s team.

In the face of climate change, the world’s tropical forests are under increased scrutiny, and scientists are closely watching their evolution. In July 2021, Nasa scientists created an index for assessing the impact of global warming and human exploitation on the planet’s largest tropical forests.

Published in the journal One Earth, their work shows that the world’s main tropical rainforest zones (Amazonia, Congo Basin, Borneo, etc.) present varying degrees of sensitivity to deforestation and climate change. Since the 1990s, 15-20 per cent of tropical forests have been felled, and a further 10 per cent damaged by fire. — ETX Studio