Articles

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

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

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

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

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

LiDAR remote sensing is a rapidly evolving technology for quantifying a variety of forest attributes, including aboveground carbon (AGC). Pulse density influences the acquisition cost of LiDAR, and grid cell s...

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

An appraisal of Indonesia’s immense peat carbon stock using national peatland maps: uncertainties and potential losses from conversion

A large proportion of the world’s tropical peatlands occur in Indonesia where rapid conversion and associated losses of carbon, biodiversity and ecosystem services have brought peatland management to the foref...

Authors: Matthew Warren, Kristell Hergoualc’h, J. Boone Kauffman, Daniel Murdiyarso and Randall Kolka

Relevance of carbon stocks of marine sediments for national greenhouse gas inventories of maritime nations

Determining national carbon stocks is essential in the framework of ongoing climate change mitigation actions. Presently, assessment of carbon stocks in the context of greenhouse gas (GHG)-reporting on a natio...

Authors: Silvania Avelar, Tessa S. van der Voort and Timothy I. Eglinton

Future productivity and phenology changes in European grasslands for different warming levels: implications for grassland management and carbon balance

Europe has warmed more than the global average (land and ocean) since pre-industrial times, and is also projected to continue to warm faster than the global average in the twenty-first century. According to th...

Authors: Jinfeng Chang, Philippe Ciais, Nicolas Viovy, Jean-François Soussana, Katja Klumpp and Benjamin Sultan

Current remote sensing approaches to monitoring forest degradation in support of countries measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) systems for REDD+

Forest degradation is a global phenomenon and while being an important indicator and precursor to further forest loss, carbon emissions due to degradation should also be accounted for in national reporting wit...

Authors: Anthea L. Mitchell, Ake Rosenqvist and Brice Mora

Combining airborne laser scanning and Landsat data for statistical modeling of soil carbon and tree biomass in Tanzanian Miombo woodlands

Soil carbon and biomass depletion can be used to identify and quantify degraded soils, and by using remote sensing, there is potential to map soil conditions over large areas. Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager...

Authors: Mikael Egberth, Gert Nyberg, Erik Næsset, Terje Gobakken, Ernest Mauya, Rogers Malimbwi, Josiah Katani, Nurudin Chamuya, George Bulenga and Håkan Olsson

Detecting peatland drains with Object Based Image Analysis and Geoeye-1 imagery

Peatlands play an important role in the global carbon cycle. They provide important ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and storage. Drainage disturbs peatland ecosystem services. Mapping drains ...

Authors: J. Connolly and N. M. Holden

Scenarios in tropical forest degradation: carbon stock trajectories for REDD+

Human-caused disturbance to tropical rainforests—such as logging and fire—causes substantial losses of carbon stocks. This is a critical issue to be addressed in the context of policy discussions to implement ...

Authors: Rafael B. de Andrade, Jennifer K. Balch, Amoreena L. Parsons, Dolors Armenteras, Rosa Maria Roman-Cuesta and Janette Bulkan

From berries to blocks: carbon stock quantification of a California vineyard

Quantifying terrestrial carbon (C) stocks in vineyards represents an important opportunity for estimating C sequestration in perennial cropping systems. Considering 7.2 M ha are dedicated to winegrape producti...

Authors: Jorge Andres Morandé, Christine M. Stockert, Garrett C. Liles, John N. Williams, David R. Smart and Joshua H. Viers

Carbon uptake by mature Amazon forests has mitigated Amazon nations’ carbon emissions

Several independent lines of evidence suggest that Amazon forests have provided a significant carbon sink service, and also that the Amazon carbon sink in intact, mature forests may now be threatened as a res...

Authors: Oliver L. Phillips and Roel J. W. Brienen

Impact of data model and point density on aboveground forest biomass estimation from airborne LiDAR

Accurate estimation of aboveground forest biomass (AGB) and its dynamics is of paramount importance in understanding the role of forest in the carbon cycle and the effective implementation of climate change mi...

Authors: Mariano Garcia, Sassan Saatchi, Antonio Ferraz, Carlos Alberto Silva, Susan Ustin, Alexander Koltunov and Heiko Balzter

Greenhouse gas emissions from tropical forest degradation: an underestimated source

The degradation of forests in developing countries, particularly those within tropical and subtropical latitudes, is perceived to be an important contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions. However, the im...

Authors: Timothy R. H. Pearson, Sandra Brown, Lara Murray and Gabriel Sidman

A carbon balance model for the great dismal swamp ecosystem

Carbon storage potential has become an important consideration for land management and planning in the United States. The ability to assess ecosystem carbon balance can help land managers understand the benefi...

Authors: Rachel Sleeter, Benjamin M. Sleeter, Brianna Williams, Dianna Hogan, Todd Hawbaker and Zhiliang Zhu

Assessing the INDCs’ land use, land use change, and forest emission projections

In preparation for the 2015 international climate negotiations in Paris, Parties submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNF...

Authors: Nicklas Forsell, Olga Turkovska, Mykola Gusti, Michael Obersteiner, Michel den Elzen and Petr Havlik

Savanna burning methodology for fire management and emissions reduction: a critical review of influencing factors

Savanna fire is a major source of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In Australia, savanna fire contributes about 3% of annual GHG emissions reportable to the Kyoto Protocol. In order to reduce GHG emissio...

Authors: Tek Narayan Maraseni, Kathryn Reardon-Smith, Greg Griffiths and Armando Apan

Attribution of net carbon change by disturbance type across forest lands of the conterminous United States

Locating terrestrial sources and sinks of carbon (C) will be critical to developing strategies that contribute to the climate change mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement. Here we present spatially resolved ...

Authors: N. L. Harris, S. C. Hagen, S. S. Saatchi, T. R. H. Pearson, C. W. Woodall, G. M. Domke, B. H. Braswell, B. F. Walters, S. Brown, W. Salas, A. Fore and Y. Yu

Improving carbon monitoring and reporting in forests using spatially-explicit information

Understanding and quantifying carbon (C) exchanges between the biosphere and the atmosphere—specifically the process of C removal from the atmosphere, and how this process is changing—is the basis for developi...

Authors: Céline Boisvenue, Byron P. Smiley, Joanne C. White, Werner A. Kurz and Michael A. Wulder