Dataset Information

A map of African humid tropical forest aboveground biomass derived from management inventories.

ABSTRACT: Forest biomass is key in Earth carbon cycle and climate system, and thus under intense scrutiny in the context of international climate change mitigation initiatives (e.g. REDD+). In tropical forests, the spatial distribution of aboveground biomass (AGB) remains, however, highly uncertain. There is increasing recognition that progress is strongly limited by the lack of field observations over large and remote areas. Here, we introduce the Congo basin Forests AGB (CoFor-AGB) dataset that contains AGB estimations and associated uncertainty for 59,857 1-km pixels aggregated from nearly 100,000?ha of in situ forest management inventories for the 2000 - early 2010s period in five central African countries. A comprehensive error propagation scheme suggests that the uncertainty on AGB estimations derived from c. 0.5-ha inventory plots (8.6-15.0%) is only moderately higher than the error obtained from scientific sampling plots (8.3%). CoFor-AGB provides the first large scale view of forest AGB spatial variation from field data in central Africa, the second largest continuous tropical forest domain of the world.

SUBMITTER: Ploton P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7343822 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A map of African humid tropical forest aboveground biomass derived from management inventories.

Ploton Pierre P Mortier Frédéric F Barbier Nicolas N Cornu Guillaume G Réjou-Méchain Maxime M Rossi Vivien V Alonso Alfonso A Bastin Jean-François JF Bayol Nicolas N Bénédet Fabrice F Bissiengou Pulchérie P Chuyong Georges G Demarquez Benoît B Doucet Jean-Louis JL Droissart Vincent V Kamdem Narcisse Guy NG Kenfack David D Memiaghe Hervé H Moses Libalah L Sonké Bonaventure B Texier Nicolas N Thomas Duncan D Zebaze Donatien D Pélissier Raphaël R Gourlet-Fleury Sylvie S

Scientific data 20200708 1

Forest biomass is key in Earth carbon cycle and climate system, and thus under intense scrutiny in the context of international climate change mitigation initiatives (e.g. REDD+). In tropical forests, the spatial distribution of aboveground biomass (AGB) remains, however, highly uncertain. There is increasing recognition that progress is strongly limited by the lack of field observations over large and remote areas. Here, we introduce the Congo basin Forests AGB (CoFor-AGB) dataset that contains ...[more]

PMID: 32641808

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Project description:As countries advance in greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting for climate change mitigation, consistent estimates of aboveground net biomass change (?AGB) are needed. Countries with limited forest monitoring capabilities in the tropics and subtropics rely on IPCC 2006 default ?AGB rates, which are values per ecological zone, per continent. Similarly, research into forest biomass change at a large scale also makes use of these rates. IPCC 2006 default rates come from a handful of studies, provide no uncertainty indications and do not distinguish between older secondary forests and old-growth forests. As part of the 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, we incorporate ?AGB data available from 2006 onwards, comprising 176 chronosequences in secondary forests and 536 permanent plots in old-growth and managed/logged forests located in 42 countries in Africa, North and South America and Asia. We generated ?AGB rate estimates for younger secondary forests (?20 years), older secondary forests (>20 years and up to 100 years) and old-growth forests, and accounted for uncertainties in our estimates. In tropical rainforests, for which data availability was the highest, our ?AGB rate estimates ranged from 3.4 (Asia) to 7.6 (Africa) Mg ha-1 year-1 in younger secondary forests, from 2.3 (North and South America) to 3.5 (Africa) Mg ha-1 year-1 in older secondary forests, and 0.7 (Asia) to 1.3 (Africa) Mg ha-1 year-1 in old-growth forests. We provide a rigorous and traceable refinement of the IPCC 2006 default rates in tropical and subtropical ecological zones, and identify which areas require more research on ?AGB. In this respect, this study should be considered as an important step towards quantifying the role of tropical and subtropical forests as carbon sinks with higher accuracy; our new rates can be used for large-scale GHG accounting by governmental bodies, nongovernmental organizations and in scientific research.

Dataset Information

A map of African humid tropical forest aboveground biomass derived from management inventories.

Publications

A map of African humid tropical forest aboveground biomass derived from management inventories.

Similar Datasets

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