Skip to content

Consistent cooling benefits of silvopasture in the tropics

Published Article

Latin America, Africa

Publication date: February 4, 2022

File format: url

View resource

This study shows that silvopasture across Latin America and Africa provides consistent cooling benefits, with temperatures dropping as woody carbon density increases. Even smallholders can reduce heat exposure and counteract projected warming, supporting climate adaptation, livestock well‑being, and rural resilience. 

Subject Tags

  • Agroforestry
  • Climate adaptation
  • Forest

Abstract

Agroforestry systems have the potential to sequester carbon and offer numerous benefits to rural communities, but their capacity to offer valuable cooling services has not been quantified on continental scales. Here, we find that trees in pasturelands (“silvopasture”) across Latin America and Africa can offer substantial cooling benefits. These cooling benefits increase linearly by −0.32 °C to −2.4 °C per 10 metric tons of woody carbon per hectare, and importantly do not depend on the spatial extent of the silvopasture systems. Thus, even smallholders can reap important cooling services from intensifying their silvopasture practices. We then map where realistic (but ambitious) silvopasture expansion could counteract a substantial fraction of the local projected warming in 2050 due to climate change. Our findings indicate where and to what extent silvopasture systems can counteract local temperature increases from global climate change and help vulnerable communities adapt to a warming world.

Citations

Zeppetello, L. R. V., Cook-Patton, S. C., Parsons, L. A., Wolff, N. H., Kroeger, T., Battisti, D. S., ... & Masuda, Y. J. (2022). Consistent cooling benefits of silvopasture in the tropics. Nat Commun 13: 708.

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28388-4

TNC Authors