Peer-reviewed Journal Articles

The Moore Center for Science at Conservation International is one of the world’s premier conservation research institutes, producing and applying groundbreaking and policy-relevant research to help decision-makers protect nature. To date, Conservation International has published more than 1,100 peer-reviewed articles, many in leading journals including Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

On average, each of our scientific papers is cited more than 45 times by other scholars — a rate exceeding that of any other U.S. conservation organization as well as leading universities.

Here is an archive of our most recent research.

The effectiveness of global protected areas for climate change mitigation

L. Duncanson, M. Liang, V. Leitold, J. Armston, S. M. Krishna Moorthy, R. Dubayah, S. Costedoat, B. J. Enquist, L. Fatoyinbo, S. J. Goetz, M. Gonzalez-Roglich, C. Merow, P. R. Roehrdanz, K. Tabor, A. Zvoleff

Nature Communications, 14

June 01, 2023

Forests play a critical role in stabilizing Earth’s climate. Establishing protected areas (PAs) represents one approach to forest conservation, but PAs were rarely created to mitigate climate change. The global impact of PAs on the carbon cycle has not previously been quantified due to a lack of accurate global-scale carbon stock maps. Here we used ~412 million lidar samples from NASA’s GEDI mission to estimate a total PA aboveground carbon (C) stock of 61.43 Gt (+/− 0.31), 26% of all mapped terrestrial woody C. Of this total, 9.65 + /− 0.88 Gt of additional carbon was attributed to PA status. These higher C stocks are primarily from avoided emissions from deforestation and degradation in PAs compared to unprotected forests. This total is roughly equivalent to one year of annual global fossil fuel emissions. These results underscore the importance of conservation of high biomass forests for avoiding carbon emissions and preserving future sequestration.

CITATION

Duncanson, L., Liang, M., Leitold, V., Armston, J., Krishna Moorthy, S. M., Dubayah, R., Costedoat, S., Enquist, B. J., Fatoyinbo, L., Goetz, S. J., Gonzalez-Roglich, M., Merow, C., Roehrdanz, P. R., Tabor, K., & Zvoleff, A. (2023). The effectiveness of global protected areas for climate change mitigation. Nature Communications, 14(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-38073-9