Carbon sink for a century

With fossil-fuel combustion and land-use activities threatening to double atmospheric carbon dioxide this century1, maintaining large forests as carbon reservoirs becomes an additional conservation incentive. We have developed a stochastic-empirical model that simulates forest-carbon cycling and now use this model to explore the response of the central Amazonian forest to an increase in biomass productivity. Our results show that these trees will accumulate carbon in their wood for more than a century after a productivity increase, underscoring the value of intact tropical forests.