CARPE Carbon Monitoring

The Congo Basin forests are a unique and important environment. They are the second largest rainforest in the world. The forests are an essential regional and global resource, providing numerous services to the local people including food, shelter, and income sources. On the global level the Congo Basin forests contains some of the highest levels of biodiversity in the world and also acts as one of the world's largest terrestrial carbon sinks. This document gives an overview of why preserving a terrestrial carbon sink in the Congo Basin is important to all of us, plus an introduction to REDD+, the current strategy to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Partner Activities

Within the Congo Basin a number of CARPE's partners are currently involved in carbon monitoring, forest carbon sequestration, and REDD+ related projects. The map below highlights a sampling of the projects in the region.

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Climate Change and the Carbon Cycle

Climate change is described by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as an alteration in climate that is directly or indirectly attributed to human activity, which modifies the global atmosphere beyond the natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. Described as such, it has been accepted by the global scientific and political communities that the earth is currently undergoing a period of climate change. Data presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have shown that the 100-year (1906-2005) linear trend has been a 0.07?C (± 0.02?C) warming, while the linear trend over just the past 50 years has been 0.13?C (± 0.03?C) per decade warming, almost twice the 100-year trend (IPCC, 2007, p237). The IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios uses a number of different emission scenarios for predicting future conditions. The majority of these scenarios are predicting a global warming of 0.2?C per decade over the next two decades. From there predictive scenarios begin to diverge depending on different levels of human emissions and different climate models. With a rapidly changing climate there are additional side effects that being revealed; reduced snow and ice extents, rising sea levels due to thermal expansion and glacial melt, ocean acidification due to CO? absorption, changes in precipitation patterns, more intense storm systems, longer droughts, and higher frequency of extreme temperature events.

Deforestation and Forest Degradation

Forests are an integral part of the carbon cycle, as part of the biosphere, forest act as an important reservoir for atmospheric carbon. Through the process of photosynthesis, forests take in atmospheric CO?, water, and sunlight to form carbohydrates. The carbon then becomes locked within the plant's biomass for the life of the plant and then eventually becomes dead organic matter and then soil components. 2010 estimates shows there to be more than 650 billion tonnes of carbon stocks stored within global forests, 44% in biomass, 11% in dead and decaying biomass, and 45% in soils (organic carbon in mineral and organic soils) (FAO, 2010, p48). Tropical forests are particularly important for forest carbon stocks as they contain the highest levels of biomass per hectare in the world. South America along with Western and Central Africa contain 247.4 and 248.7 tonnes of biomass per hectare respectively, while the global average for forest is only 149 tonnes per hectare (FAO, 2010, p41-42). The Western and Central African forests hold the second highest amount of biomass carbon per hectare and the second highest amount of total carbon stocks per hectare globally (FAO, 2010, p45). Within the Congo Basin's tropical forest it is the closed evergreen lowland forest that represents more than 60% of stored carbon, while only occupying 35% of the area (OFAC, 2008, p200). This highlights the importance of the tropical forests within Congo Basin in relation to carbon, specifically the immensely valuable role that the closed evergreen lowland forest plays as a regional and global carbon sink.

REDD+

REDD stands for; Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, while the plus (+) stands for; the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries. REDD+ is the current UNFCCC strategy to mitigate climate change and curb global deforestation. The main objectives of this strategy are for industrialized countries to work with and financially compensate developing countries in reducing their greenhouse emissions by curbing deforestation and forest degradation within their national borders. Due to the large amount of global emissions resulting from deforestation and forest degradation, along with the projected low cost associated with reducing those emissions, reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation is seen as a cost effective way to reduce global greenhouse emissions within developing countries.

Remote Sensing for Forest Monitoring

Remote sensing imagery is an integral component in forest cover monitoring within tropical and sub-tropical forests. There are two main areas that require different remote sensing techniques. First is the monitoring of changes in forest cover, i.e. afforestation, reforestation, and deforestation (ARD activities). Second is the monitoring of forest degradation or composition changes within the current standing forest. The following general coverage of remote sensing techniques is based on the recommendations within the GOFC-GOLD Sourcebook GOFC-GOLD Sourcebook.

Bibliography

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