scholarly journals Evidence that a national REDD+ program reduces tree cover loss and carbon emissions in a high forest cover, low deforestation country

2019 ◽  
Vol 116 (49) ◽  
pp. 24492-24499 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anand Roopsind ◽  
Brent Sohngen ◽  
Jodi Brandt
Keyword(s):  
Forest Cover ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Forest Protection ◽  
Forest Policies ◽  
Deforestation Rates ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation Policy ◽  
Implementation Period ◽  
Rich Countries ◽  
The Impact

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) is a climate change mitigation policy in which rich countries provide payments to developing countries for protecting their forests. In 2009, the countries of Norway and Guyana entered into one of the first bilateral REDD+ programs, with Norway offering to pay US$250 million to Guyana if annual deforestation rates remained below 0.056% from 2010 to 2015. To quantify the impact of this national REDD+ program, we construct a counterfactual times-series trajectory of annual tree cover loss using synthetic matching. This analytical approach allows us to quantify tree cover loss that would have occurred in the absence of the Norway-Guyana REDD+ program. We found that the Norway-Guyana REDD+ program reduced tree cover loss by 35% during the implementation period (2010 to 2015), equivalent to 12.8 million tons of avoided CO2 emissions. Our analysis indicates that national REDD+ payments attenuated the effect of increases in gold prices, an internationally traded commodity that is the primary deforestation driver in Guyana. Overall, we found strong evidence that the program met the additionality criteria of REDD+. However, we found that tree cover loss increased after the payments ended, and therefore, our results suggest that without continued payments, forest protection is not guaranteed. On the issue of leakage, which is complex and difficult to quantify, a multinational REDD+ program for a region could address leakage that results from differences in forest policies between neighboring countries.

scholarly journals Evaluating Forest Cover and Fragmentation in Costa Rica with a Corrected Global Tree Cover Map

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 3226
Author(s):  
Daniel Cunningham ◽  
Paul Cunningham ◽  
Matthew E. Fagan
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Forest Area ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Agricultural Crop ◽  
Forest Change ◽  
Alos Palsar ◽  
Tropical Regions ◽  
The Impact

Global tree cover products face challenges in accurately predicting tree cover across biophysical gradients, such as precipitation or agricultural cover. To generate a natural forest cover map for Costa Rica, biases in tree cover estimation in the most widely used tree cover product (the Global Forest Change product (GFC) were quantified and corrected, and the impact of map biases on estimates of forest cover and fragmentation was examined. First, a forest reference dataset was developed to examine how the difference between reference and GFC-predicted tree cover estimates varied along gradients of precipitation and elevation, and nonlinear statistical models were fit to predict the bias. Next, an agricultural land cover map was generated by classifying Landsat and ALOS PalSAR imagery (overall accuracy of 97%) to allow removing six common agricultural crops from estimates of tree cover. Finally, the GFC product was corrected through an integrated process using the nonlinear predictions of precipitation and elevation biases and the agricultural crop map as inputs. The accuracy of tree cover prediction increased by ≈29% over the original global forest change product (the R2 rose from 0.416 to 0.538). Using an optimized 89% tree cover threshold to create a forest/nonforest map, we found that fragmentation declined and core forest area and connectivity increased in the corrected forest cover map, especially in dry tropical forests, protected areas, and designated habitat corridors. By contrast, the core forest area decreased locally where agricultural fields were removed from estimates of natural tree cover. This research demonstrates a simple, transferable methodology to correct for observed biases in the Global Forest Change product. The use of uncorrected tree cover products may markedly over- or underestimate forest cover and fragmentation, especially in tropical regions with low precipitation, significant topography, and/or perennial agricultural production.

scholarly journals India’s Commitments to Increase Tree and Forest Cover: Consequences for Water Supply and Agriculture Production within the Central Indian Highlands

Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 959
Author(s):  
Benjamin Clark ◽  
Ruth DeFries ◽  
Jagdish Krishnaswamy
Keyword(s):  
Groundwater Recharge ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Hydrological Modeling ◽  
Monsoon Season ◽  
Forest Policy ◽  
Central India ◽  
Field Measurements ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
The Impact

As part of its nationally determined contributions as well as national forest policy goals, India plans to boost tree cover to 33% of its land area. Land currently under other uses will require tree-plantations or reforestation to achieve this goal. This paper examines the effects of converting cropland to tree or forest cover in the Central India Highlands (CIH). The paper examines the impact of increased forest cover on groundwater infiltration and recharge, which are essential for sustainable Rabi (winter, non-monsoon) season irrigation and agricultural production. Field measurements of saturated hydraulic conductivity (Kfs) linked to hydrological modeling estimate increased forest cover impact on the CIH hydrology. Kfs tests in 118 sites demonstrate a significant land cover effect, with forest cover having a higher Kfs of 20.2 mm hr−1 than croplands (6.7mm hr−1). The spatial processes in hydrology (SPHY) model simulated forest cover from 2% to 75% and showed that each basin reacts differently, depending on the amount of agriculture under paddy. Paddy agriculture can compensate for low infiltration through increased depression storage, allowing for continuous infiltration and groundwater recharge. Expanding forest cover to 33% in the CIH would reduce groundwater recharge by 7.94 mm (−1%) when converting the average cropland and increase it by 15.38 mm (3%) if reforestation is conducted on non-paddy agriculture. Intermediate forest cover shows however shows potential for increase in net benefits.

scholarly journals The Effectiveness of China’s National Forest Protection Program and National-level Nature Reserves, 2000 to 2010

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guopeng Ren ◽  
Stephen S. Young ◽  
Lin Wang ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Yongcheng Long ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Forest Cover ◽  
National Level ◽  
Mainland China ◽  
Canopy Cover ◽  
Nature Reserves ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Natural Forests ◽  
Forest Protection ◽  
Deforestation Rate ◽  
Deforestation Rates

There is profound interest in knowing the degree to which China’s institutions are capable of protecting its natural forests and biodiversity in the face of economic and political change. China’s two most important forest protection policies are its National Forest Protection Program (NFPP) and its National-level Nature Reserves (NNRs). The NFPP was implemented in 17 provinces starting in the year 2000 in response to deforestation-caused flooding. We used MODIS data (MOD13Q1) to estimate forest cover and forest loss across mainland China, and we report that 1.765 million km2or 18.7% of mainland China was covered in forest (12.3%, canopy cover > 70%) and woodland (6.4%, 40% ≤ canopy cover < 70%) in 2000. By 2010, a total of 480,203 km2of forest+woodland was lost, amounting to an annual deforestation rate of 2.7%. The forest-only loss was 127,473 km2, or 1.05% annually. The three most rapidly deforested provinces were outside NFPP jurisdiction, in the southeast. Within the NFPP provinces, the annual forest+woodland loss rate was 2.26%, and the forest-only rate was 0.62%. Because these loss rates are likely overestimates, China appears to have achieved, and even exceeded, its NFPP target of reducing deforestation to 1.1% annually in the target provinces. We also assemble the first-ever polygon dataset for China’s forested NNRs (n=237), which covered 74,030 km2in 2000. Conventional unmatched and covariate-matching analyses both find that about two-thirds of China’s NNRs exhibit effectiveness in protecting forest cover and that within-NNR deforestation rates are higher in provinces that have higher overall deforestation.

Estimating carbon losses from disturbances in tropical moist forests (deforestation and forest degradation) since 2011

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederic Achard ◽  
Christelle Vancutsem ◽  
Valerio Avitabile ◽  
Andreas Langner
Keyword(s):  
Forest Cover ◽  
Moving Average ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Accurate Information ◽  
Natural Forests ◽  
Carbon Loss ◽  
Average Value ◽  
Large Trees ◽  
Carbon Losses

&lt;p&gt;The need for accurate information to characterize the evolution of forest cover at the tropical scale is widely recognized, particularly to assess carbon losses from processes of disturbances such as deforestation and forest degradation&lt;sup&gt;1&lt;/sup&gt;. In fact, the contribution of degradation is a key element for REDD+ activities and is presently mostly ignored in national reporting due to the lack of reliable information at such scale.&lt;br&gt;Recently Vancutsem et al.&lt;sup&gt;2&lt;/sup&gt; produced a dataset at 30m resolution which delineates the tropical moist forest (TMF) cover changes from 1990 to 2019. The use of the Landsat historical time-series at high temporal and spatial resolution allows accurate monitoring of deforestation and degradation, from which the carbon losses from disturbances in TMFs can be estimated. A degradation event is defined here as temporary absence of tree cover (visible within a Landsat pixel during a maximum of three years duration) and includes impacts of fires and logging activities.&lt;br&gt;We quantify the annual losses in above-ground carbon stock associated to degradation and deforestation in TMF over the period 2011-2019 by combining the annual disturbances in forest cover derived from the Landsat archive the pan-tropical map of aboveground live woody biomass density (AGB) from Santoro et al.&lt;sup&gt;3&lt;/sup&gt; at 100 m. To reduce the local variability within the estimation of AGB values, we apply a moving average filter under the TMF cover for the year 2010.&amp;#160;&lt;br&gt;The carbon loss due to degradation is accounted as full carbon loss within a pixel (like a deforestation). The reason is that logging activities usually remove large trees with higher biomass densities than the average value of the disturbed pixel indicated by the pan-tropical maps. To avoid double counting of carbon removal, deforestation happening after degradation is not accounted as carbon loss.&lt;br&gt;Our results are compared with estimates of previous studies that cover different periods and forest domains: (i) Tyukavina et al.&lt;sup&gt;4&lt;/sup&gt;&amp;#160;provide estimates of carbon loss from deforestation for the period 2000-2012 for all forests (evergreen and deciduous) discriminating natural forests from managed forests, and (ii) Baccini et al.&lt;sup&gt;5 &lt;/sup&gt;provide estimates of carbon loss from deforestation and degradation for the period 2003-2014 for both evergreen and deciduous forests.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In a further step, we will analyze the sensitivity of the results to the input AGB values by applying the same approach to other AGB maps (e.g. Baccini et al. 2012&lt;sup&gt;6&lt;/sup&gt;).&lt;br&gt;Finally we intend to use Sentinel-2 data (10 m) for monitoring the location and extent of logging activities and burnt areas and further improve the estimates of carbon losses from forest degradation.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;1. Achard F, House JI 2015 doi 10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/101002&lt;br&gt;2. Vancutsem C. et al. 2019 Submitted to Nat. Geoscience&lt;br&gt;3. Santoro M et al. 2018 doi 10.1594/PANGAEA.894711&lt;br&gt;4. Tuykavina A et al 2018 http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/10/7/074002&lt;br&gt;5. Baccini A et al. 2017 doi 10.1126/science.aam5962&lt;br&gt;6. Baccini A et al. 2012 doi 10.1038/nclimate1354&lt;/p&gt;

scholarly journals Effect of oil palm sustainability certification on deforestation and fire in Indonesia

2017 ◽  
Vol 115 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly M. Carlson ◽  
Robert Heilmayr ◽  
Holly K. Gibbs ◽  
Praveen Noojipady ◽  
David N. Burns ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Palm Oil ◽  
Oil Palm ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Fire Detection ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Forest Loss ◽  
Detection Rates ◽  
Active Fire ◽  
Routine Monitoring ◽  
The Impact

Many major corporations and countries have made commitments to purchase or produce only “sustainable” palm oil, a commodity responsible for substantial tropical forest loss. Sustainability certification is the tool most used to fulfill these procurement policies, and around 20% of global palm oil production was certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2017. However, the effect of certification on deforestation in oil palm plantations remains unclear. Here, we use a comprehensive dataset of RSPO-certified and noncertified oil palm plantations (∼188,000 km2) in Indonesia, the leading producer of palm oil, as well as annual remotely sensed metrics of tree cover loss and fire occurrence, to evaluate the impact of certification on deforestation and fire from 2001 to 2015. While forest loss and fire continued after RSPO certification, certified palm oil was associated with reduced deforestation. Certification lowered deforestation by 33% from a counterfactual of 9.8 to 6.6% y−1. Nevertheless, most plantations contained little residual forest when they received certification. As a result, by 2015, certified areas held less than 1% of forests remaining within Indonesian oil palm plantations. Moreover, certification had no causal impact on forest loss in peatlands or active fire detection rates. Broader adoption of certification in forested regions, strict requirements to avoid all peat, and routine monitoring of clearly defined forest cover loss in certified and RSPO member-held plantations appear necessary if the RSPO is to yield conservation and climate benefits from reductions in tropical deforestation.

scholarly journals India in international climate governance: Through soft power from REDD to REDD+ policy in favor of relative gains

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Swati Negi ◽  
Lukas Giessen
Keyword(s):  
Soft Power ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Mitigation Policy ◽  
Strategic Behaviour ◽  
Direct Benefits ◽  
Power Strategies ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation Policy ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Relative Gains

This paper seeks to examine India’s role in the politics of a specific climate change mitigation policy called “Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+)”. It explores India’s strategic behaviour towards the development of REDD policy. The paper argues that India had pushed for the remodelling of the global REDD negotiations by expanding its scope to conservation activities, which entails more direct benefits for India. This is largely due to differences in India’s rates of forest cover and deforestation as compared to high forest - high deforestation countries such as Brazil and Indonesia. To substantiate its argument, the paper uses the main underpinnings of relative gains theory in international relations and applies them toward interpreting India’s behaviour in negotiating REDD+ at global level. Further, the paper analyses the Indian strategies used to remodel the REDD mechanism using insights from soft power theory and its more recent amendments. Thematic analysis of the REDD-relevant documents as well as exploratory expert interviews have been employed for showing India’s proactive role in the politics of REDD+. It is concluded that India indeed played a central role in critical past decisions, which lead to re-shaping REDD due to relative gains concerns and mainly by means of soft power strategies.

Economic Issues Related to Asian Deforestation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie Onder ◽  
James T. Erbaugh ◽  
Georgia Christina Kosmidou-Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Supply Chains ◽  
Multinational Corporations ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Economic Incentives ◽  
Forest Monitoring ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Forest Governance ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
The Impact

The loss of Asian forests represents one of the most significant changes in contemporary land cover. Between 2000 and 2020 alone, an area twice the size of Malaysia has lost its tree cover as measured by Earth observation data. These trends have significant repercussions for greenhouse gas emissions, carbon storage, the conservation of biodiversity, and the wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLCs), making Asian deforestation a phenomenon of global concern. There are many immediate factors that drive deforestation across Asia, but the conversion to commodity agriculture is the leading cause. Most notably, the expansion of oil palm and rubber plantations by both multinational corporations and smallholders has led to dramatic conversion of forests. The production of timber as well as pulp and paper has further contributed to significant deforestation, with the evolution of each sector often driven by government policies, such as logging bans. However, it is the underlying drivers (i.e., distal and proximate causes) that determine where and when commodity production displaces forest cover. They are particularly challenging to tackle in a globalized world, where consumption patterns driven by local population and income growth lead to environmental and social change in distant producer countries, including in Asia. Certification programs and legality requirements have been put in place to address these externalities with varying success. Deforestation in Asia is also facilitated by weak governance and regulatory frameworks, where forest rights are often unclear, and financial, technological, and human resources for forest monitoring are limited. Several contemporary forest governance strategies seek to promote sustainable management of Asian forests. Financial mechanisms such as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) and payments for ecosystem services (PES) schemes seek to provide economic incentives for forest conservation. Pledges and activities to remove deforestation from commodity supply chains seek to respond to consumer demand, promote corporate environmental and social responsibility, and reduce the extent to which commodity supply chains contribute to Asian deforestation. And multiple state-led initiatives across Asia to empower IPLCs aim to align forest management objectives between national governments, subnational administrations, and local people. Assessing the impact of interventions related to financial mechanisms, corporate responsibility, and local forest governance will be critical to shaping the future of Asian forest cover change.

Ecologies of the colonial present: Pathological forestry from the taux de boisement to civilized plantations

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diana K Davis ◽  
Paul Robbins
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Forest Tree ◽  
Tree Planting ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
British India ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Forest Policies ◽  
French Colonial ◽  
The Government

Tree-planting has long been an obsession of postcolonial environmental governance. Never innocent of its imperial history, the practice persists in global regimes of forestry today. For over two centuries, afforestation has been viewed as a panacea for a variety of ills including civilizational decline, diminished precipitation, warming temperatures, soil erosion, and decreasing biodiversity. As a result, tree plantations, despite their demonstrated failings in many environments, have flourished as an art of environmental governance that we term arboreal biopolitics. We trace some of the origins and importance of the taux de boisement in such plantation efforts, typically understood as a percentage of “appropriately” wooded land within a territory. Likely first developed in France by the early 19th century, this notion was operationalized in colonial territories assumed to be massively deforested. Targets of 30–33% forest cover, the minimum assumed for European civilization, were built into French forest training and policy and exported globally. Indeed, we demonstrate here that these French colonial policies and influences were as significant in many regions as those of better documented German forestry traditions, especially in African colonial territories and in British India. We further analyze the implications of these policies, and the degree to which the concept of a taux de boisement appears to have traveled to colonial forestry in India, further shaping forest policies of the postindependence era. We provide the example of the “National Mission for a Green India,” an effort by the Government of India to increase forest/tree cover by 5 million hectares and improve quality of forest cover on another 5 million hectares of forest/nonforest lands. Ostensibly aimed at improving forest-based livelihoods, the initiative has all the qualities of past forestry efforts in India, which have historically performed a reverse role: disinheriting forest-rooted populations. Colonial forestry, we therefore conclude, continues to haunt contemporary policy, contributing pathological ecologies, especially in the drylands, often with pernicious effects on local people.

scholarly journals EVALUATION OF ANNUAL MODIS PTC DATA FOR DEFORESTATION AND FOREST DEGRADATION ANALYSIS

2016 ◽  
Vol XLI-B2 ◽  
pp. 9-13
Author(s):  
Y. Gao ◽  
A. Ghilardi ◽  
J. F. Mas ◽  
J. Paneque-Galvez ◽  
M. Skutsch
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Forest Degradation ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Visual Interpretation ◽  
Forest Change ◽  
Validation Data ◽  
Degradation Analysis ◽  
Spot 5 ◽  
Quality Layer

Anthropogenic land-cover change, e.g. deforestation and forest degradation cause carbon emissions. To estimate deforestation and forest degradation, it is important to have reliable data on forest cover. In this analysis, we evaluated annual MODIS Percent Tree Cover (PTC) data for the detection of forest change including deforestation, forest degradation, reforestation and revegetation. The annual MODIS PTC data (2000 – 2010) were pre-processed by applying quality layer. Based on the PTC values of the annual MODIS data, forest change maps were produced and assessed by comparing with the data from visual interpretation of SPOT-5 images. The assessment was applied to two case-studies: Ayuquila Basin and Monarch Reserve. Results show that the detected deforestation patches by visual interpretation are roughly 4 times in quantity more than those by MODIS PTC data, which can be partially due to the much higher spatial resolution of SPOT-5, being able to pick up small deforestation patches. This analysis found poor spatial overlapping for both case-studies. Possible reasons for the discrepancy in quantity and spatial coincidence were provided. It is necessary to refine the methodology for forest change detection by PTC images; also to refine the validation data in terms of data periods and forest change categories to ensure a better assessment.

scholarly journals Deriving a Forest Cover Map in Kyrgyzstan Using a Hybrid Fusion Strategy

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (19) ◽  
pp. 2325 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Jia ◽  
Yuqian Li ◽  
Wenzhong Shi ◽  
Ling Zhu
Keyword(s):  
Forest Cover ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Threshold Value ◽  
Forest Resources ◽  
Tree Cover ◽  
Optimal Size ◽  
Fusion Strategy ◽  
Forest Policies ◽  
Kappa Value ◽  
Hybrid Fusion

Forests have potential economic value and play a significant role in maintaining ecological balance. Considering its outdated and incomplete forest statistics, the Kyrgyzstan Republic urgently needs a forest cover map for assessing its current forest resources and assisting national policies on improving rural livelihood and sustainability. This study adopted a hybrid fusion strategy to develop a forest cover map for the Kyrgyzstan Republic with improved accuracy. The fusion strategy uses the merits of the GlobeLand30 in 2010 and the USGS TreeCover2010, the benefits of auxiliary geographic information, and the advantages of the stacking learning method in classification. Additionally, we explored the influence of different forest definitions, based on the tree cover percentage value in the USGS TreeCover2010, on the accuracy of forest cover. Results suggested that the accuracy of our model can be improved significantly by including auxiliary geographic features and feeding the optimal size of training samples. Thereafter, using our model, forest cover maps were derived at different tree cover threshold values in the USGS TreeCover2010. Importantly, the forest cover map at the tree cover threshold value of 40% was determined as the most accurate one with the kappa value of 0.89, whose spatial extent constitutes about 2.4% of the entire territory. This estimated forest cover percentage suggests a low estimation of forest resources based on rigorous definition, which can be valuable for reviewing and amending the current national forest policies.

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