Woods Hole Research Center

 

Annotated Bibliography:

The papers highlighted in this annotated bibliography offer recent research findings relevant to the negotiations and policy discussions underway at COP16. For a complete list of WHRC peer-reviewed literature, and where permitted, access to the full articles, visit www.whrc.org/resources/publications.

National Level Carbon Stock Dataset:

As part of ongoing projects in the pan-tropical region, Woods Hole Research Center scientists and their collaborators generated a national level aboveground dataset for tropical countries. Using a combination of co-located field measurements, LiDAR observations and imagery recorded from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), WHRC researchers produced national level maps showing the amount and spatial distribution of aboveground carbon.

Pantropical Forest Carbon Mapped with Satellite and Field Observations

The ability to estimate the distribution and total amount of carbon stored in woody biomass across the tropics is important for compensation mechanisms for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Errors in biomass estimation of tropical forests are, however, large due to of a paucity of systematic surveys, together with large spatial variability and diversity of tree species (Clark et al. 2001). Because systematic surveys are sparse, plot-level measurements of biomass density (thus carbon) are extended to large areas using a variety of methods including (i) classification of land cover types, each assigned an estimated average value of biomass density based on estimates from the literature or forestry surveys, (ii) calculation of biomass density from regressions based on gridded environmental variables such as mean annual temperature and precipitation, (iii) determination of relationships between in situ biomass density and remote sensing characteristics that can be consistently mapped over large regions. Maps derived using the latter approach are a substantial departure from the other more traditional methods, and have the advantage of providing robust, spatially consistent and continuous values of the magnitude (amount) of carbon stock at any given location (Baccini et al. 2008, Houghton et al. 2009). They thereby also provide a basis for monitoring stock changes through time (Goetz et al. 2009).

The role of science in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation

Emissions of carbon from tropical deforestation and degradation currently account for 12–15% of total anthropogenic carbon emissions each year, and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD; including REDD+) is poised to be the primary international mechanism with the potential to reduce these emissions. This article provides a brief summary of the scientific research that led to REDD, and that continues to help refine and resolve issues of effectiveness, efficiency and equitability for a REDD mechanism. However, REDD deals only with tropical forests and there are other regions, ecosystems and processes that govern the sources and sinks of carbon in terrestrial ecosystems. Ongoing research will reveal which of these other flows of carbon are most important, and which of them might present further opportunities to reduce emissions (or enhance sinks) through environmental policy mechanisms, as well as how they might do this.

Fixing a flawed approach to forest accounting in the next round of the Kyoto Protocol

In this Editorial, the authors attempt to quantify the atmospheric impact of these proposals. All Parties with reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (“Annex I” Parties) have been required to submit reports to the UNFCCC documenting their GHG emissions from various sectors and activities since 1990 (the base year for their current commitments). The authors used these reports to estimate the historical emissions from the period 1990–2008, which is the time period covered by the most recent reports available and then compared these historical emissions to the proposals made by Kyoto Parties for the second Kyoto commitment period.

On international equity in reducing emissions from deforestation

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) can be an effective and efficient means of mitigating climate change. However, the perceived equity in the distribution of financial incentives for REDD could also emerge as a critical issue in international negotiations. The design of reference levels, which provide the benchmark for crediting emissions reductions, affects the economic incentives for national participation in a REDD mechanism and thus the overall willingness to reach an agreement on REDD. This paper compares the equity impacts of five proposed reference level designs using a partial equilibrium model. Tradeoffs among equity, environmental effectiveness and cost-efficiency indicate the proposals trigger similar aggregate emissions reductions but lead to different outcomes in efficiency and alternative measures of equity. If equity across countries is measured as the financial incentive provided relative to a country’s forest carbon stock, then a REDD mechanism compensating a uniform share of at-risk carbon stocks is the most equitable. On the other hand, if equity is evaluated as the financial incentive relative to the opportunity costs of participating in REDD, then the most equitable approach would be compensating emissions reductions but withholding a part of the payments to compensate for carbon stocks, which also encourages broader country participation under our model.