Forest degradation contributes more to carbon loss than forest cover loss in North American boreal forests

The carbon sinks of North American boreal forests have been threatened by global warming and forest disturbances in recent decades, but knowledge about the carbon balance of these forests in recent years remains unknown. We tracked annual aboveground carbon (AGC) changes from 2016 to 2021 across the forest regions of NASA’s Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) core study domain, using Vegetation Optical Depth derived from …