Topic: The Recent Global Greening and its Implications on Global Carbon Cycle

Speaker: Prof. SONG Conghe, University of North Carolina at ChapelHill

Brief Introduction to the Report:

Whether the Earth is greening or browning has significant implications to the global environment, ranging from local ecosystem services to global climate change. Using the most recent version of remotely sensed data products released by NASA, MODIS Collection 6, Song and his colleagues found that the Earth is actually greening overall during 2001-2015, although local browning exists. 

China and India lead the global greening trend. Further research using the modeling tool, the CCW model that was developed in the Song Lab, found that global Gross Primary Productivity does not increase as strongly as the greening.

Moreover, more than half of the greening areas are located in croplands, while forests are browning as a whole, primarily driven by deforestation in the tropics. These findings indicate that the global greening trend does not translate to effective carbon storage for global warming mitigation.

Time: 2:30pm July 12, 2019

Venue: Room A0214, IGSNRR

Host: ZHOU Chenghu, member of CAS, State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System