Baseline map of carbon emissions from deforestation in tropical regions |
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Authors: | Harris Nancy L Brown Sandra Hagen Stephen C Saatchi Sassan S Petrova Silvia Salas William Hansen Matthew C Potapov Peter V Lotsch Alexander |
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Institution: | Ecosystem Services Unit, Winrock International, Arlington, VA 22202, USA. nharris@winrock.org |
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Abstract: | Policies to reduce emissions from deforestation would benefit from clearly derived, spatially explicit, statistically bounded estimates of carbon emissions. Existing efforts derive carbon impacts of land-use change using broad assumptions, unreliable data, or both. We improve on this approach using satellite observations of gross forest cover loss and a map of forest carbon stocks to estimate gross carbon emissions across tropical regions between 2000 and 2005 as 0.81 petagram of carbon per year, with a 90% prediction interval of 0.57 to 1.22 petagrams of carbon per year. This estimate is 25 to 50% of recently published estimates. By systematically matching areas of forest loss with their carbon stocks before clearing, these results serve as a more accurate benchmark for monitoring global progress on reducing emissions from deforestation. |
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