Articles

Optimizing sequestered carbon in forest offset programs: balancing accounting stringency and participation

Although there is broad agreement that negative carbon emissions may be required in order to meet the global climate change targets specified in the Paris Agreement and that carbon sequestration in the terrest...

Authors: Lindsey Wise, Eric Marland, Gregg Marland, Jason Hoyle, Tamara Kowalczyk, Tatyana Ruseva, Jeffrey Colby and Timothy Kinlaw

Assessing the contribution of harvested wood products under greenhouse gas estimation: accounting under the Paris Agreement and the potential for double-counting among the choice of approaches

There are multiple approaches for estimating emissions and removals arising from harvested wood products (HWP) based on differences between when and where a given carbon stock change is calculated. At this mom...

Authors: Atsushi Sato and Yukihiro Nojiri

China’s pathway to a low carbon economy

Climate change has emerged as one of the most important environmental issues worldwide. As the world’s biggest developing country, China is participating in combating climate change by promoting a low carbon e...

Authors: Wenjuan Yang, Rongqin Zhao, Xiaowei Chuai, Liangang Xiao, Lianhai Cao, Zhanping Zhang, Qinglin Yang and Lunguang Yao

Comparative assessment of net CO₂ exchange across an urbanization gradient in Korea based on eddy covariance measurements

It is important to quantify changes in CO₂ sources and sinks with land use and land cover change. In the last several decades, carbon sources and sinks in East Asia have been altered by intensive land cover chang...

Authors: Je-Woo Hong, Jinkyu Hong, Junghwa Chun, Yong Hee Lee, Lim-Seok Chang, Jae-Bum Lee, Keewook Yi, Young-San Park, Young-Hwa Byun and Sangwon Joo

The relevance of using in situ carbon and nitrogen data and satellite images to assess aboveground carbon and nitrogen stocks for supporting national REDD + programmes in Africa

To reduce the uncertainty in estimates of carbon emissions resulting from deforestation and forest degradation, better information on the carbon density per land use/land cover (LULC) class and in situ carbon ...

Authors: Adéyèmi Chabi, Sven Lautenbach, Jérôme Ebagnerin Tondoh, Vincent Oladokoun Agnila Orekan, Stephen Adu-Bredu, Nicholas Kyei-Baffour, Vincent Joseph Mama and John Fonweban

Evaluating spatial coverage of data on the aboveground biomass in undisturbed forests in the Brazilian Amazon

Brazilian Amazon forests contain a large stock of carbon that could be released into the atmosphere as a result of land use and cover change. To quantify the carbon stocks, Brazil has forest inventory plots fr...

Authors: Graciela Tejada, Eric Bastos Görgens, Fernando Del Bon Espírito-Santo, Roberta Zecchini Cantinho and Jean Pierre Ometto

Impact of modelling choices on setting the reference levels for the EU forest carbon sinks: how do different assumptions affect the country-specific forest reference levels?

In 2018, the European Union (EU) adopted Regulation 2018/841, which sets the accounting rules for the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector for the period 2021–2030. This regulation is part of...

Authors: Nicklas Forsell, Anu Korosuo, Mykola Gusti, Sebastian Rüter, Petr Havlik and Michael Obersteiner

Building houses and managing lawns could limit yard soil carbon for centuries

Comparisons of soil carbon (C) pools across land uses can be confounded by site-specific history. To better quantify the response of soil C pools to residential development and use, we compared yard soils (n =...

Authors: Morgan E. Peach, Laura A. Ogden, Eleni A. Mora and Andrew J. Friedland

On the realistic contribution of European forests to reach climate objectives

A recent article by Luyssaert et al. (Nature 562:259–262, 2018) analyses the climate impact of forest management in the European Union, considering both biogeochemical (i.e., greenhouse gases, GHG) and biophysica...

Authors: Giacomo Grassi, Alessandro Cescatti, Robert Matthews, Gregory Duveiller, Andrea Camia, Sandro Federici, Jo House, Nathalie de Noblet-Ducoudré, Roberto Pilli and Matteo Vizzarri

Carbon stock under major land use/land cover types of Hades sub-watershed, eastern Ethiopia

Developing land management scenarios that have the potential to sequester carbon and reduce greenhouse gasses (GHG) emission on a sustainable basis entails quantifying the current carbon stock under different ...

Authors: Tessema Toru and Kibebew Kibret

Assessing Lagrangian inverse modelling of urban anthropogenic CO₂ fluxes using in situ aircraft and ground-based measurements in the Tokyo area

In order to use in situ measurements to constrain urban anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO₂), we use a Lagrangian methodology based on diffusive backward trajectory tracer reconstructions and Bayesian ...

Authors: Ignacio Pisso, Prabir Patra, Masayuki Takigawa, Toshinobu Machida, Hidekazu Matsueda and Yousuke Sawa

Estimation of the aboveground biomass and carbon stocks in open Brazilian Savannah developed on sandy soils

The Cerrado is the second largest biome in Brazil and the most biodiverse tropical savannah in the world and acts as a great sequester of atmospheric carbon. The lack of studies related to the quantification o...

Authors: Camila Paula de Oliveira, Márcio Rocha Francelino, Mayara Daher, Emanuel José Gomes de Araújo, Leonardo de Souza Sanches, Kauanna Domingues Cabral de Andrade and Júlia Santos Nunes de Campos

Carbon stocks for different land cover types in Mainland Tanzania

Developing countries participating in the mitigation mechanism of reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), are required to establish a forest reference emission level (FREL), if th...

Authors: Ernest William Mauya, Wilson Ancelm Mugasha, Marco Andrew Njana, Eliakimu Zahabu and Rogers Malimbwi

GHG mitigation in Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector in Thailand

The Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) sector is responsible for almost a quarter of the global Greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions. The emissions associated with AFOLU activities are projected to i...

Authors: Bijay Bahadur Pradhan, Achiraya Chaichaloempreecha and Bundit Limmeechokchai

Forest degradation and biomass loss along the Chocó region of Colombia

Wet tropical forests of Chocó, along the Pacific Coast of Colombia, are known for their high plant diversity and endemic species. With increasing pressure of degradation and deforestation, these forests have b...

Authors: Victoria Meyer, Sassan Saatchi, António Ferraz, Liang Xu, Alvaro Duque, Mariano García and Jérôme Chave

Carbon stock of the various carbon pools in Gerba-Dima moist Afromontane forest, South-western Ethiopia

Unlike in the developed countries, Ethiopia does not have carbon inventories and databank to monitor and enhance carbon sequestration potential of different forests. Only small efforts have been made so far to...

Authors: Abyot Dibaba, Teshome Soromessa and Bikila Workineh

Carbon dynamics of paper, engineered wood products and bamboo in landfills: evidence from reactor studies

There has been growing interest in the development of waste-specific decay factors for estimation of greenhouse gas emissions from landfills in national greenhouse gas inventories. Although engineered wood pro...

Authors: Fabiano A. Ximenes, Amrit Kathuria, Morton A. Barlaz and Annette L. Cowie

Carbon costs and benefits of France’s biomass energy production targets

Concern about climate change has motivated France to reduce its reliance on fossil fuel by setting targets for increased biomass-based renewable energy production. This study quantifies the carbon costs and be...

Authors: Aude Valade, Sebastiaan Luyssaert, Patrick Vallet, Sylvestre Njakou Djomo, Ingride Jesus Van Der Kellen and Valentin Bellassen

Selection criteria for linear regression models to estimate individual tree biomasses in the Atlantic Rain Forest, Brazil

Biomass models are useful for several purposes, especially for quantifying carbon stocks and dynamics in forests. Selecting appropriate equations from a fitted model is a process which can involves several cr...

Authors: Carlos Roberto Sanquetta, Ana Paula Dalla Corte, Alexandre Behling, Luani Rosa de Oliveira Piva, Sylvio Péllico Netto, Aurélio Lourenço Rodrigues and Mateus Niroh Inoue Sanquetta

Pasture enclosures increase soil carbon dioxide flux rate in Semiarid Rangeland, Kenya

Pasture enclosures play an important role in rehabilitating the degraded soils and vegetation, and may also influence the emission of key greenhouse gasses (GHGs) from the soil. However, no study in East Afric...

Authors: Collins O. Oduor, Nancy Karanja, Richard Onwong’a, Stephen Mureithi, David Pelster and Gert Nyberg

Biomass allometric equation and expansion factor for a mountain moist evergreen forest in Mozambique

Worldwide, forests are an important carbon sink and thus are key to mitigate the effects of climate change. Mountain moist evergreen forests in Mozambique are threatened by agricultural expansion, uncontrolled...

Authors: Sá Nogueira Lisboa, Benard Soares Guedes, Natasha Ribeiro and Almeida Sitoe

Global carbon dioxide removal rates from forest landscape restoration activities

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) has been adopted by governments and practitioners across the globe to mitigate and adapt to climate change and restore ecological functions across degraded landscapes. Howeve...

Authors: Blanca Bernal, Lara T. Murray and Timothy R. H. Pearson

Questioning emissions-based approaches for the definition of REDD+ deforestation baselines in high forest cover/low deforestation countries

REDD+ is being questioned by the particular status of High Forest/Low Deforestation countries. Indeed, the formulation of reference levels is made difficult by the confrontation of low historical deforestation...

Authors: Camille Dezécache, Jean-Michel Salles and Bruno Hérault

Dynamics of carbon and CO₂ removals by Brazilian forest plantations during 1990–2016

We analyzed the dynamics of carbon (C) stocks and CO₂ removals by Brazilian forest plantations over the period 1990–2016. Data on the extent of forests compiled from various sources were used in the calculations....

Authors: Carlos Roberto Sanquetta, Ana Paula Dalla Corte, Allan Libanio Pelissari, Margarida Tomé, Greyce Charllyne Benedet Maas and Mateus Niroh Inoue Sanquetta

Time-series maps of aboveground biomass in dipterocarps forests of Malaysia from PALSAR and PALSAR-2 polarimetric data

Malaysia typically suffers from frequent cloud cover, hindering spatially consistent reporting of deforestation and forest degradation, which limits the accurate reporting of carbon loss and CO₂ emissions for red...

Authors: Hamdan Omar and Muhamad Afizzul Misman

Understanding the implications of the EU-LULUCF regulation for the wood supply from EU forests to the EU

In June 2018, the European Parliament and Council of the European Union adopted a legislative regulation for incorporating greenhouse gas emissions and removals from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (EU-...

Authors: Gert-Jan Nabuurs, Eric J. M. M. Arets and Mart-Jan Schelhaas

Carbon budgets of potential tropical perennial grass cropping scenarios for bioenergy feedstock production

The environmental costs of fossil fuel consumption are globally recognized, opening many pathways for the development of regional portfolio solutions for sustainable replacement fuel and energy options. The pu...

Authors: Meghan Pawlowski, Manyowa N. Meki, James R. Kiniry and Susan E. Crow

Spatially-integrated estimates of net ecosystem exchange and methane fluxes from Canadian peatlands

Peatlands are an important component of Canada’s landscape, however there is little information on their national-scale net emissions of carbon dioxide [Net Ecosystem Exchange (NEE)] and methane (CH₄). This study...

Authors: K. L. Webster, J. S. Bhatti, D. K. Thompson, S. A. Nelson, C. H. Shaw, K. A. Bona, S. L. Hayne and W. A. Kurz

Multiscale divergence between Landsat- and lidar-based biomass mapping is related to regional variation in canopy cover and composition

Satellite-based aboveground forest biomass maps commonly form the basis of forest biomass and carbon stock mapping and monitoring, but biomass maps likely vary in performance by region and as a function of spa...

Authors: David M. Bell, Matthew J. Gregory, Van Kane, Jonathan Kane, Robert E. Kennedy, Heather M. Roberts and Zhiqiang Yang

The effects of land cover change on carbon stock dynamics in a dry Afromontane forest in northern Ethiopia

Forests play an important role in mitigating global climate change by capturing and sequestering atmospheric carbon. Quantitative estimation of the temporal and spatial pattern of carbon storage in forest ecos...

Authors: Negasi Solomon, Opoku Pabi, Ted Annang, Isaac K. Asante and Emiru Birhane

Climate change mitigation in Canada’s forest sector: a spatially explicit case study for two regions

We determine the potential of forests and the forest sector to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by changes in management practices and wood use for two regions within Canada’s managed forest from 2018 t...

Authors: C. E. Smyth, B. P. Smiley, M. Magnan, R. Birdsey, A. J. Dugan, M. Olguin, V. S. Mascorro and W. A. Kurz

A systems approach to assess climate change mitigation options in landscapes of the United States forest sector

United States forests can contribute to national strategies for greenhouse gas reductions. The objective of this work was to evaluate forest sector climate change mitigation scenarios from 2018 to 2050 by appl...

Authors: Alexa J. Dugan, Richard Birdsey, Vanessa S. Mascorro, Michael Magnan, Carolyn E. Smyth, Marcela Olguin and Werner A. Kurz

Contribution of forest wood products to negative emissions: historical comparative analysis from 1960 to 2015 in Norway, Sweden and Finland

Forests and forest products can significantly contribute to climate change mitigation by stabilizing and even potentially decreasing the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Harvested wood pro...

Authors: Cristina-Maria Iordan, Xiangping Hu, Anders Arvesen, Pekka Kauppi and Francesco Cherubini

Estimating urban above ground biomass with multi-scale LiDAR

Urban trees have long been valued for providing ecosystem services (mitigation of the “heat island” effect, suppression of air pollution, etc.); more recently the potential of urban forests to store significan...

Authors: Phil Wilkes, Mathias Disney, Matheus Boni Vicari, Kim Calders and Andrew Burt

Delineating managed land for reporting national greenhouse gas emissions and removals to the United Nations framework convention on climate change

Land use and management activities have a substantial impact on carbon stocks and associated greenhouse gas emissions and removals. However, it is challenging to discriminate between anthropogenic and non-anth...

Authors: Stephen M. Ogle, Grant Domke, Werner A. Kurz, Marcelo T. Rocha, Ted Huffman, Amy Swan, James E. Smith, Christopher Woodall and Thelma Krug

Science-based approach for credible accounting of mitigation in managed forests

The credibility and effectiveness of country climate targets under the Paris Agreement requires that, in all greenhouse gas (GHG) sectors, the accounted mitigation outcomes reflect genuine deviations from the ...

Authors: Giacomo Grassi, Roberto Pilli, Jo House, Sandro Federici and Werner A. Kurz

Landsat phenological metrics and their relation to aboveground carbon in the Brazilian Savanna

The quantification and spatially explicit mapping of carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems is important to better understand the global carbon cycle and to monitor and report change processes, especially in ...

Authors: M. Schwieder, P. J. Leitão, J. R. R. Pinto, A. M. C. Teixeira, F. Pedroni, M. Sanchez, M. M. Bustamante and P. Hostert

Potential carbon loss associated with post-settlement wetland conversion in southern Ontario, Canada

Natural wetlands can mitigate ongoing increases in atmospheric carbon by storing any net balance of organic carbon (peat) between plant production (carbon uptake) and microbial decomposition (carbon release). ...

Authors: Eunji Byun, Sarah A. Finkelstein, Sharon A. Cowling and Pascal Badiou

Estimation of forest aboveground biomass and uncertainties by integration of field measurements, airborne LiDAR, and SAR and optical satellite data in Mexico

Information on the spatial distribution of aboveground biomass (AGB) over large areas is needed for understanding and managing processes involved in the carbon cycle and supporting international policies for c...

Authors: Mikhail Urbazaev, Christian Thiel, Felix Cremer, Ralph Dubayah, Mirco Migliavacca, Markus Reichstein and Christiane Schmullius

Assessment of soil organic carbon fractions and carbon management index under different land use types in Olesharo Catchment, Narok County, Kenya

The changes in land use and land cover have a strong effect on the total soil organic carbon, its fractions and its overall soil health. This study carried out in Olesharo Catchment, Kenya, was to quantify the...

Authors: Bernice M. Sainepo, Charles K. Gachene and Anne Karuma

Recycling of phenolic compounds in Borneo’s tropical peat swamp forests

Tropical peat swamp forests (TPSF) are globally significant carbon stores, sequestering carbon mainly as phenolic polymers and phenolic compounds (particularly as lignin and its derivatives) in peat layers, in...

Authors: Catherine M. Yule, Yau Yan Lim and Tse Yuen Lim

Ecosystem carbon emissions from 2015 forest fires in interior Alaska

In the summer of 2015, hundreds of wildfires burned across the state of Alaska, and consumed more than 1.6 million ha of boreal forest and wetlands in the Yukon–Koyukuk region. Mapping of 113 large wildfires u...

Authors: Christopher Potter

Accounting of GHG emissions and removals from forest management: a long road from Kyoto to Paris

Forests have always played an important role in agreeing on accounting rules during the past two decades of international climate policy development. Starting from activity-based gross–net accounting of select...

Authors: Joachim H. A. Krug

Correction to: Quantifying and understanding carbon storage and sequestration within the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, a tropical biodiversity hotspot

Upon publication of the original article [1], the authors noticed that the figure labelling for Fig. 4 in the online version was processed wrong. The top left panel should be panel a, with the panels to its right...

Authors: Simon Willcock, Oliver L. Phillips, Philip J. Platts, Andrew Balmford, Neil D. Burgess, Jon C. Lovett, Antje Ahrends, Julian Bayliss, Nike Doggart, Kathryn Doody, Eibleis Fanning, Jonathan M. H. Green, Jaclyn Hall, Kim L. Howell, Rob Marchant, Andrew R. Marshall…

Synergizing community-based forest monitoring with remote sensing: a path to an effective REDD+ MRV system

The reliable monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) of carbon emissions and removals from the forest sector is an important part of the efforts on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degrada...

Authors: M. S. R. Murthy, Hammad Gilani, Bhaskar Singh Karky, Eklabya Sharma, Marieke Sandker, Upama Ashish Koju, Shiva Khanal and Mohan Poudel

Implications of allometric model selection for county-level biomass mapping

Carbon accounting in forests remains a large area of uncertainty in the global carbon cycle. Forest aboveground biomass is therefore an attribute of great interest for the forest management community, but the ...

Authors: Laura Duncanson, Wenli Huang, Kristofer Johnson, Anu Swatantran, Ronald E. McRoberts and Ralph Dubayah

High resolution remote sensing for reducing uncertainties in urban forest carbon offset life cycle assessments

Urban forests reduce greenhouse gas emissions by storing and sequestering considerable amounts of carbon. However, few studies have considered the local scale of urban forests to effectively evaluate their pot...

Authors: Jan Tigges and Tobia Lakes

Revised methane emissions factors and spatially distributed annual carbon fluxes for global livestock

Livestock play an important role in carbon cycling through consumption of biomass and emissions of methane. Recent research suggests that existing bottom-up inventories of livestock methane emissions in the US...

Authors: Julie Wolf, Ghassem R. Asrar and Tristram O. West

Historical effects of dissolved organic carbon export and land management decisions on the watershed-scale forest carbon budget of a coastal British Columbia Douglas-fir-dominated landscape

To address how natural disturbance, forest harvest, and deforestation from reservoir creation affect landscape-level carbon (C) budgets, a retrospective C budget for the 8500 ha Sooke Lake Watershed (SLW) from...

Authors: B. P. Smiley and J. A. Trofymow

Erratum to: Combined effect of pulse density and grid cell size on predicting and mapping aboveground carbon in fast-growing Eucalyptus forest plantation using airborne LiDAR data

Authors: Carlos Alberto Silva, Andrew Thomas Hudak, Carine Klauberg, Lee Alexandre Vierling, Carlos Gonzalez-Benecke, Samuel de Padua Chaves Carvalho, Luiz Carlos Estraviz Rodriguez and Adrián Cardil