Zou et al. (2026): Larger forest patches have greater per-area productivity
Yibiao Zou, Gabriel Reuben Smith, Thomas Lauber, Joe Wan, Haozhi Ma, Noel Gorelick, Constantin M. Zohner and Thomas W. Crowther, IN: Nature Ecology & Evolution, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-026-03075-5
Forest fragmentation could reduce carbon sequestration beyond losses caused by declining forest area alone, if smaller patches are intrinsically less productive per unit area than larger ones. Here the authors analyse 17 million forest patches across the conterminous USA and show that per-area net primary productivity increases systematically with patch size.