Moving the audience to act

Measuring carbon in complex landscapes with trees

experiences from the

World Agroforestry Centre and the

ASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins

Measuring carbon in complex landscapes with trees

• Introduction: Henry Neufeldt

• REALU approach: Peter A Minang

• Case studies: Johannes Dietz

• Contextualization: Henry Neufeldt

• Questions

Moving the audience to act

Peter A Minang

Global CoordinatorASB Partnership for the Tropical Forest Margins at the

World Agroforestry Centre

Reducing Emissions from All Land Uses:

a framework for global emissions reductions

Why REALU?

• Current forest definition within UNFCCC is problematic

• Drivers of deforestation not adequately addressed within REDD+ this far

• Current REDD+ construction ignores high potential emissions reduction and sequestration in landscapes

• Copenhagen text on REDD indicates total accounting within IPCC guidelines

• A third of Indonesia’s forest emissions (total of 0.6 Gt C/yr) occur outside institutionally defined forest and is not accounted for under the current REDD+ policy

• The famous E. Usambaras forest in Tanzania 8.8 Mt C emitted between 1992 and 2006 but no deforestation occurred according to definition

Complex and variable landscapes - the reality

REALU in Sync with IPCC

• All carbon pools: living biomass (aboveground and belowground), dead organic matters (litter and necromass) and soil carbon

• All 6 land use categories: Forest land, cropland, wetland, grassland, settlement, other land

• All transition between land use categories (remains and converted)

• Disaggregation-aggregation, stratification by climatic or other ecological regions, forest types, land-use or forestry practices, fuelwood gathering patterns, etc

• Tier definitions for methods in AFOLU: from simplest (Tier 1) to the most sophisticated (Tier 3)

• Choice of methods (gain-loss vs stock changes) and choice of activity data

The Legend is Key

Projects on REALU Approach

• REALU Project

• Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation through Alternative Landuses in Rainforests of the Tropics - REDD ALERT

• Accountability and Local Level Initiative for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Indonesia - ALLREDDI

• Carbon Benefits Project - CBP

• Countries: Cameroon, Indonesia, Peru, Vietnam, Nepal, Kenya and others

Case studies:

1. Counting trees outside forests in the Peruvian Amazon - Glenn Hyman, CIAT

2. Carbon measured and modeled in landscapes with trees on farms: an example from Western Kenya - Johannes Dietz, ICRAF

3. Carbon Budget from the Peatland of West Kalimantan, Indonesia - Fahmuddin Agus, ISRI

4. Land Degradation Surveillance - Thomas Gumbricht, AfSIS

Indonesian Soil

Research Institute

About 1/3 of the central Peruvian Amazon study area available in high resolution imagery

Aguaytia watershed17,000 km2

Case Study 1

Counting trees on the farms and in other landscapes

• GPS• Digital photographs• Google fusion tables• Google maps

Field work

RED REDD

REDD+ REDD++

Errors related to scale:

ASTER image

Large cattle ranches(5 Mg/ha carbon)

Forest with 80% canopy cover (240 Mg/ha) contained within large cattle ranches

Up to 48 times more CO2eq in forestscompared to pastures

0,00

2000,00

4000,00

6000,00

8000,00

10000,00

12000,00

14000,00

16000,00

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20000,00

Haciendas Hacienda+Bosque= C-stock detallada

C-stock Hacienda Vs C-stock Detallada

C-stock Haciendas Vs C-stock detallada empleando aster

C-stock Haciendas Vs C-stock detallada empleando GE

Pastures Pastureswith trees

Carbon stock and large cattle ranches with and without accounting for trees

Difference and carbon stock depends on the resolution of the analysis

Analyzed on ASTER

Analyzed on Google Earth

Western Kenya: Complex and

heterogeneous agricultural landscape

Case Study 2

Rationale

• Mix of land cover types

• Support for remote sensing approaches with ground based measurements

• Need for reliable and practical approaches for assessing biomass in trees across such landscapes:

– Cost reduction

– Quality tiers

– Trade-off Cost:Accuracy

Rationale

• Mix of land cover types

• Support for remote sensing approaches with ground based measurements

• Need for reliable and practical approaches for assessing biomass in trees across such landscapes:

– Cost reduction

– Quality tiers

– Trade-off Cost:Accuracy

Approach

• Destructive sampling of randomly selected trees across 5 size classes

• Additional parameters recorded:

– Below ground biomass

– Wood density (http://www.worldagroforestry.org/sea/Products/AFDbases/WD/Index.htm)

– Canopy projection

– Canopy cover

– Fractal branching

• Development of calibrated non-destructive ground sampling methods

First results

• Size does matter:

– < 25cm diameter = 10% BM

– > 40 cm diameter = 75% BM

– 10% largest trees = 45% BM

• Exisiting formulas apply but complex landscapes seem to resemble a mix of forest types

First results

MethodsLand use (2008) Future arable peatland

• Overlay of peat depth and land cover maps

• Time series land cover maps for developing land use change matrix

• Some measurement of peat C stock, and use of default values of emission. removal factors

Case Study 3

Challenges

Including

• Lack of baseline data

• Laborious and intensive sampling

• Remoteness of sites

Policy Applications: CO2 Emissions under BAU and Different

Scenarios

Next steps

• Combine repeated CO2 gas flux measurement and C stock data

• Test the scenarios at local level, evaluate for the legal and institutional constraints.

• Evaluate the abatement costs and have a sensitivity test for willingness to accept

Random Hierarchical Field Sampling

Sentinel Site

16 Clusters

10 Plots

4 Sub-plots

Case Study 4

Spectral libraries and Soil Mapping

The spectral properties of different

vegetation and soils, and even soil

physical and chemical properties can

be used for “fingerprinting” complex

landscapes.

Using reflectance corrected satellite

imagery, soil conditions can be

inferred from the spectral

information.

Mount KilimanjaroReflectance corrected anniversary Landsat images

1987

2000

2006

Mapping the landscape from satellite images

Density of woody biomass on the northern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro Reflectance corrected anniversary Landsat images

Mapping the landscape from satellite images

1987

2000

2006

Moving the audience to actMoving the audience to act

Carbon Benefits and Costs

Comparing the costs for measuring and monitoring within the CBP with the benefits obtained on the markets

Henry Neufeldt,

Climate Change Research Leader

World Agroforestry Centre

• High costs for project-based carbon estimation

• Unreliable measurements on the ground

• Problems related to scaling from plot to landscape level

• Problems related to carbon leakage

• Lack of comprehensive, standardized, robust methodology toassess and report terrestrial carbon

Challenges with MRV

The Carbon Benefits Project aims to provide a cost-effective end-to-end estimation and support system for showing carbon benefits in GEF and potentially other natural resource management projects

The system will be applicable to a wide range of soils, climates and land uses

Component 1:Development of standardized and integrated tools for quantification and assessment of carbon (including C accounting) and GHG benefits, both above and below ground

Component 2:Test Cases and capacity building using existing GEF projects in five countries

Component 3:Best practice toolbox for project design using socioeconomic and biophysical appraisal

Component 4:Integrated and easy-to-use frontend for carbon management, accounting and exchange

Earth Observation System

Satellite Database Data Analysis

Carbon ModelsCarbon Accounts

WWW

MarketsBuyers

Carbon Sellers

An Operational System using EO

GEF managers

Site

0 1 2 3 4

N2O

em

issio

ns (

ng

cm

-2 h

r-1)

-0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

3.5Forest

Agriculture

Chamber measurements

Community Based Carbon Measurement

Benefits of community – based carbon measurements

– Access to local knowledge

– Community buy-in

– More project resources go to communities

– Transparency for the community and others

– Cost effective extension of sampling resources

The CBP will develop community-based measurement materials for

– Extension personnel

– Community members

Randomization to minimize local biases that might arise from convenience sampling

Sentinel Site based on the

Land Degradation Surveillance

Framework

a spatially stratified,

hierarchical, randomized

sampling framework

Sentinel site (100 km2)

16 Clusters (1 km2)

10 Plots (1000 m2)

4 Sub-Plots (100 m2)

Lo

ca

l (s

ite

-le

ve

l) C

ref

Examples from UNEP-ICRAF West Africa Drylands Project

10 km

0.064% measured

Very high resolution

Extrapolation to

Landsat

Lo

ca

l (s

ite

-le

ve

l) C

ref

Examples from UNEP-ICRAF West Africa Drylands Project

160 km

Conclusions

• MRV costs are likely to decrease strongly with scale but are potentially very high for small projects

need to use different methodological tiers

• Management costs will decrease moderately with scale

• Significant costs for third-party verification of standards

• Significant setup costs

• Carbon benefits for small farmers are generally small need for co-benefits (e.g. tree products; better market connection;

time)

• Benefits for farmers will not likely increase strongly through bundling

Thank you!

Henry Neufeldt

h.neufeldt@cgiar.org

Peter A Minang

a.minang@cgiar.org

Johannes Dietz

j.dietz@cgiar.org