Question

How does fragmentation affect carbon sequestration and height of a tree? Also, how does biomass play a role in this?

Will tree height grow rapidly due to fragmentation?

Answer 1

Forest fragmentation is a process by which a forest is broken into smaller pieces and these pieces are generated separated by roads, corridors, agriculture, human development, industries etc. This is a problem because the parts which are not forest are gradually expanded to a point where the forests are scattered and become disconnected from one another. It has impacted the biomass severely and hence there has been loss of habitat and species even have become extinct due to this. The forest are important as carbon sink and with the increase in the fragmentation, it harms the ability of the forest to sequester carbons. The carbon is lost to the climate and the environment due to increase in the number of the forest edges that tend to loss the carbon and hence this leads to more global warming. The carbon sink has reduces a lot due to the fragmentation .

This has even impacted the growth of the plant and its height because due to the formation of more forest edges due the fragmentation, more and more carbon is lost to the environment. The forest edges due to being exposed are more prone to wind and sun and hence due to increasing stress by the heat and global warming, the plants tend to grow slowly and hence height of the plants majorly on the edges will not be able to grow.