We’ve all seen videos of lightning striking trees, but how often does this happen? New research sheds light on the real impact of lightning on forests.
A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has created a computer model that provides fresh insights into lightning’s effects on global forest ecosystems. According to their study, about 320 million trees are killed each year by lightning. This number doesn’t even include trees lost in lightning-related wildfires.
“Lightning is a crucial yet often ignored factor in forest health,” the researchers highlighted in their study, published in Global Change Biology.
The team combined observational data and global lightning patterns with a widely used vegetation simulation. Their findings indicate that trees lost to lightning make up 2.1% to 2.9% of all plant biomass loss annually. When trees die, they release significant amounts of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere, affecting Earth’s carbon cycle.
With this new model, lead researcher Andreas Krause noted that they can now estimate how many trees lightning strikes each year and identify which regions are hit hardest. This is key for understanding global carbon storage and forest structure.
The decay of trees from lightning strikes emits between 770 million and 1.09 billion tons of CO2 each year. This amount is surprisingly substantial. For context, living plants burned in wildfires produce around 1.26 billion tons of CO2 annually. Both figures, however, pale in comparison to the total CO2 emissions from wildfires, which stand at about 5.85 billion tons each year.
Krause warned that most climate models predict an increase in lightning frequency in the coming decades. Currently, lightning-induced tree deaths are most common in tropical areas. But as lightning becomes more frequent in temperate and boreal regions, it could significantly affect those forests too.
Interestingly, not all trees that get struck die. Some trees can survive and even thrive after a lightning strike, though they can also sustain serious damage.
Understanding the role of lightning in forest ecosystems is crucial for improving ecosystem models and predicting future changes in vegetation dynamics. As climate patterns shift, keeping track of these details may help us better safeguard our forests.
For more about the study, you can read it here or check out TUM’s statement here.
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