Quantifying carbon stocks in shifting cultivation landscapes under divergent management scenarios relevant to REDD.

ABSTRACT: Shifting cultivation dominates many tropical forest regions. It is expanding into old-growth forests, and fallow period duration is rapidly decreasing, limiting secondary forest recovery. Shifting cultivation is thus a major driver of carbon emissions through deforestation and forest degradation, and of biodiversity loss. The impacts of shifting cultivation on carbon stocks have rarely been quantified, and the potential for carbon-based payments for ecosystem services (PES), such as REDD+, to protect carbon in shifting cultivation landscapes is unknown. We present empirical data on aboveground carbon stocks in old-growth forest and shifting cultivation landscapes in northeast India, a hotspot of threatened biodiversity. We then model landscape-level carbon stocks under business-as-usual sc

SUBMITTER: Borah JR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6175365 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature