A person walks through a forest in France. Forest management practices in France and across Europe might have a surprising impact, according to a new analysis. (JEFF PACHOUD/AFP/Getty Images)

Human influence on the earth's climate extends deep into our forests — impacting the carbon cycle in ways we might not expect, a new paper recently noted.

Trees take in carbon dioxide, trapping the harmful gas in their trunks, leaves and roots until decay, thereby offsetting greenhouse gas emission from human activities. But of European forests since 1750 shows that human management — and a resulting shift away from certain tree species — has actually resulted in a small temperature increase. It's to the tune of 0.12 degrees Celsius over the time period, even with a 10 percent overall gain in forested land on the continent.

In the study, an international team of researchers modeled forestry data for the past 260 years. The shift to faster-growing conifer species, such as spruce and pine, and away from broadleaf trees, such as oak, spurred a greater absorption of “solar radiation,” the . This means conifer tree species are trapping heat that would otherwise reflect back into space. “They also release less cooling water into the atmosphere through evaporation,” according to Science Magazine.

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Lead author Kim Naudts told the BBC that the findings mean forest managers should carefully consider the species they plant as carbon mitigators.

"We shouldn't put our hopes on forests to mitigate what is an emission problem," she told the BBC. "Our results indicate that in large parts of Europe, a tree planting program would offset the emissions, but it would not cool the planet, especially not if the afforestation is done with conifers."

Science Magazine wrote that the continent's “specific history of forestry” management and naturally prevalent species mean the study's results cannot be extrapolated to the rest of the world.

Vivek Arora, a research scientist at the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis,who was not involved in the research, also told Science Magazine that different approaches to statistical analysis could also yield very different results with the same data — meaning the 0.12-degrees Celsius figure should be interpreted carefully. Also, the idea that differing land-use policies can unwittingly contribute to climatic issues goes back 20 years or more.

Still, the paper authors suggest that a further analysis of the forestry practices used for climate change adaptation require careful consideration.

“The political imperative to mitigate climate change through afforestation and forest management therefore risks failure, unless it is recognized that not all forestry contributes to climate change mitigation,” they write in the paper.

The article “Europe’s forest management did not mitigate climate warming” is published in the journal Science.

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