Old-growth forest patches are widespread outside nature reserves in Southern China
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Forests can be hotspots for ecosystem services, such as carbon stocks, biodiversity and cultural values, but economic drivers have replaced most old forests with monoculture plantations, which have very limited ecosystem services. Remnants of ancient old forests exist, in particular in rural mountain landscapes such as China Karst, but conservation typically focuses on large contiguous forest areas, often overlooking smaller patches of old forests. Here we use sub-meter resolution satellite data from recent years to locate 25 billion trees in Southern China. We find that 728 million (2%) of those trees have the potential of being part of old-growth forests. Out of these, only 15% are located in nature reserves, but the remaining ones are scattered in small clusters, possibly being remnants of old forests and should be considered as designated protection areas. Our work shows how modern satellite technology can be used for advancing biological conservation of ecologically unique forest habitats, by locating millions of forest patches in and around the karst region of China, which have the potential to be hotspots of biodiversity and species preservation.
