September 29, 2025 | 11:40 am
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - The average size of trees in the Amazon rainforest has been consistently increasing alongside rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. This finding indicates that large trees now play a more significant role in determining the forest's ability to remain a carbon sink.
Researchers from the RAINFOR Amazon Forest Inventory Network, led by Adriane Esquivel-Muelbert from the University of Cambridge, measured tree diameters in 188 plots averaging 12,000 square meters across the Amazon basin.
The monitoring was conducted over different periods, some spanning up to 30 years, as CO2 concentrations increased by almost a fifth. The research results show that tree diameters increased an average of 3.3 percent per decade.
"What we’re following is some space in the forest and in that space the average tree size is bigger, meaning that the trees can pack more carbon in that space than they could in the past," said Esquivel-Muelbert, as quoted from the New Scientist, September 25, 2025. "The winners are the big trees that compete better for light and for water."
"The structure of the Amazon Forest is changing quite consistently across the whole basin. We have more bigger trees and fewer smaller trees, so the average size has shifted up towards those bigger trees," explained Rebecca Banbury Morgan from the University of Bristol.
Researchers suspect that this faster growth is triggered by the increase in CO2 levels, acting as a natural fertilizer. This condition makes large trees increasingly vital for the amount of carbon the forest can absorb. The loss of large trees is expected to have a significant impact on the ecosystem.
"The important finding is that CO2 has been acting as a fertiliser, increasing tree growth, and in many ways that is reassuring, because wood is a globally significant carbon sink," said Peter Etchells from Durham University.
"However, will this continue to be the case as the climate continues to change, potentially shifting the balance between growth, nutrients, temperature and CO2?" he continued.
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