Dataset Information

Monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks and emissions using Planet satellite data.

ABSTRACT: Tropical forests are crucial for mitigating climate change, but many forests continue to be driven from carbon sinks to sources through human activities. To support more sustainable forest uses, we need to measure and monitor carbon stocks and emissions at high spatial and temporal resolution. We developed the first large-scale very high-resolution map of aboveground carbon stocks and emissions for the country of Peru by combining 6.7 million hectares of airborne LiDAR measurements of top-of-canopy height with thousands of Planet Dove satellite images into a random forest machine learning regression workflow, obtaining an R² of 0.70 and RMSE of 25.38 Mg C ha^-1 for the nationwide estimation of aboveground carbon density (ACD). The diverse ecosystems of Peru harbor 6.928 Pg C, of which only 2.9 Pg C are found in protected areas or their buffers. We found significant carbon emissions between 2012 and 2017 in areas aggressively affected by oil palm and cacao plantations, agricultural and urban expansions or illegal gold mining. Creating such a cost-effective and spatially explicit indicators of aboveground carbon stocks and emissions for tropical countries will serve as a transformative tool to quantify the climate change mitigation services that forests provide.

SUBMITTER: Csillik O

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6882785 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks and emissions using Planet satellite data.

Csillik Ovidiu O Kumar Pramukta P Mascaro Joseph J O'Shea Tara T Asner Gregory P GP

Scientific reports 20191128 1

Tropical forests are crucial for mitigating climate change, but many forests continue to be driven from carbon sinks to sources through human activities. To support more sustainable forest uses, we need to measure and monitor carbon stocks and emissions at high spatial and temporal resolution. We developed the first large-scale very high-resolution map of aboveground carbon stocks and emissions for the country of Peru by combining 6.7 million hectares of airborne LiDAR measurements of top-of-can ...[more]

PMID: 31780757

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Project description:BACKGROUND: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 and nitrogen data is needed. This allows a better representation of the spatial distribution of carbon and nitrogen stocks across LULC. The aim of this study was to emphasize the relevance of using in situ carbon and nitrogen content of the main tree species of the site when quantifying the aboveground carbon and nitrogen stocks in the context of carbon accounting. This paper contributes to that, by combining satellite images with in situ carbon and nitrogen content in dry matter of stem woods together with locally derived and published allometric models to estimate aboveground carbon and nitrogen stocks at the Dassari Basin in the Sudan Savannah zone in the Republic of Benin. RESULTS:The estimated mean carbon content per tree species varied from 44.28?±?0.21% to 49.43?±?0.27%. The overall mean carbon content in dry matter for the 277 wood samples of the 18 main tree species of the region was 47.01?±?0.28%-which is close to the Tier 1 coefficient of 47% default value suggested by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The overall mean fraction of nitrogen in dry matter was estimated as 0.229?±?0.016%. The estimated mean carbon density varied from 1.52?±?0.14 Mg C ha-1 (for Cropland and Fallow) to 97.83?±?27.55 Mg C ha-1 (for Eucalyptus grandis Plantation). In the same order the estimated mean nitrogen density varied from 0.008?±?0.007 Mg ha-1 of N (for Cropland and Fallow) to 0.321?±?0.088 Mg ha-1 of N (for Eucalyptus grandis Plantation). CONCLUSION:The results show the relevance of using the in situ carbon and nitrogen content of the main tree species for estimating aboveground carbon and nitrogen stocks in the Sudan Savannah environment. The results provide crucial information for carbon accounting programmes related to the implementation of the REDD?+?initiatives in developing countries.

Dataset Information

Monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks and emissions using Planet satellite data.

Publications

Monitoring tropical forest carbon stocks and emissions using Planet satellite data.

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