The potential of secondary forests

TROPICAL FORESTS ARE increasingly modified by human activities. Centuries of human–forest interactions have led to a diverse array of forest areas in different phases of succession. In recent decades, forest conversion to cattle pasture or agricultural fields, followed by land abandonment, has led to large areas of second-growth forest in the Amazon. These forests grow rapidly and sequester large amounts of carbon in their biomass, but they tend to be ignored, as most of the debate on the carbon balance of the Amazon basin tends to revolve around old-growth forests.