Carbon from Tropical Deforestation

Summary

How much carbon is emitted from tropical deforestation? Attempts to answer this question have generally relied on data from national inventories. More recently, sufficient satellite data have become available to provide independent estimates. On page 1573 of this issue, Harris et al. (1) report a global estimate of tropical deforestation emissions derived entirely from satellite data. For the period from 2000 to 2005, those emissions are much lower than previously reported.