Degradation in carbon stocks near tropical forest edges

Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer (), Ivan Ramler, Richard Sharp, Nick M. Haddad, James S. Gerber, Paul C. West, Lisa Mandle, Peder Engstrom, Alessandro Baccini, Sarah Sim, Carina Mueller and Henry King
Additional contact information
Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer: Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
Ivan Ramler: Computer Science and Statistics, St Lawrence University
Richard Sharp: Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
Nick M. Haddad: David Clark Labs, North Carolina State University
James S. Gerber: Institute on the Environment (IonE), University of Minnesota
Paul C. West: Institute on the Environment (IonE), University of Minnesota
Lisa Mandle: Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University
Peder Engstrom: Institute on the Environment (IonE), University of Minnesota
Alessandro Baccini: Woods Hole Research Center
Sarah Sim: Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre, Unilever R&D
Carina Mueller: Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre, Unilever R&D
Henry King: Safety and Environmental Assurance Centre, Unilever R&D

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Carbon stock estimates based on land cover type are critical for informing climate change assessment and landscape management, but field and theoretical evidence indicates that forest fragmentation reduces the amount of carbon stored at forest edges. Here, using remotely sensed pantropical biomass and land cover data sets, we estimate that biomass within the first 500 m of the forest edge is on average 25% lower than in forest interiors and that reductions of 10% extend to 1.5 km from the forest edge. These findings suggest that IPCC Tier 1 methods overestimate carbon stocks in tropical forests by nearly 10%. Proper accounting for degradation at forest edges will inform better landscape and forest management and policies, as well as the assessment of carbon stocks at landscape and national levels.

Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms10158 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:6:y:2015:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms10158

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms10158

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().