Native tropical forests have been increasingly replaced by different land uses. But some of these lands have regrown into secondary forests and agroforestry systems, among other forest cover types. Understanding how different forest cover types contribute to aboveground biomass (AGB) in working landscapes is central to policy and resource management, given the increasing transformation of tropical landscapes. Here, we used Generalized Linear Models (GLM) to compare aboveground biomass in different forest covers, as follows: secondary forests of 10-year-old, 25-year-old and 40-year-old, mature forests and two different agroforestry systems (AFS): ‘cabruca’ and ‘conventional’. Our results showed that the cocoa production areas in the cabruca system (106.07 Mg/ha) have similar AGB compared to 40-year-old secondary forests (159.67 Mg/ha), but the mature forests (391.65 Mg/ha) stored the highest amount of AGB compared to other forest covers. We emphasize the importance of mature forests for carbon storage, in addition to maintaining various ecosystem services. In addition, we demonstrate that agroforestry systems are very important for the storage of AGB in working landscapes, with values similar to secondary forests in an advanced stage of development. Furthermore, we stress the importance of working landscapes that include agroforestry systems and secondary forests, as they provide timber and non-timber products, reduce the pressure on native forest resources, and contribute to the provision of ecosystem services, such as carbon storage. Our results also highlight the potential of southern Bahia for the implementation of carbon credit projects that include natural forests and other forest cover types.
Rocha et al. (Fri,) studied this question.