Demol, Miro;
Aguilar-Amuchastegui, Naikoa;
Bernotaite, Gabija;
Disney, Mathias;
Duncanson, Laura;
Elmendorp, Elise;
Espejo, Andres;
... Burt, Andrew; + view all
(2024)
Multi-scale lidar measurements suggest miombo woodlands contain substantially more carbon than thought.
Communications Earth & Environment
, 5
(1)
, Article 366. 10.1038/s43247-024-01448-x.
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Abstract
Miombo woodlands are integral to livelihoods across southern Africa, biodiversity in the region, and the global carbon cycle, making accurate and precise monitoring of their state and change essential. Here, we assembled a terrestrial and airborne lidar dataset covering 50 kha of intact and degraded miombo woodlands, and generated aboveground biomass estimates with low uncertainty via direct 3D measurements of forest structure. We found 1.71 ± 0.09 TgC was stored in aboveground biomass across this landscape, between 1.5 and 2.2 times more than the 0.79–1.14 TgC estimated by conventional methods. This difference is in part owing to the systematic underestimation of large trees by allometry. If these results were extrapolated across Africa’s miombo woodlands, their carbon stock would potentially require an upward revision of approximately 3.7 PgC, implying we currently underestimate their carbon sequestration and emissions potential, and disincentivise their protection and restoration.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Multi-scale lidar measurements suggest miombo woodlands contain substantially more carbon than thought |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s43247-024-01448-x |
| Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s43247-024-01448-x |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Open Access This article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the The World Bank, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence and indicate if changes were made. The use of the The World Bank’s name, and the use of the The World Bank’s logo, shall be subject to a separate written licence agreement between the The World Bank and the user and is not authorized as part of this CC-IGO licence. Note that the link provided below includes additional terms and conditions of the licence. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/. |
| Keywords: | Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Physical Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geosciences, Multidisciplinary, Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Sciences & Ecology, Geology, FOREST BIOMASS, ABOVEGROUND BIOMASS, ALLOMETRIC MODELS, TREES, ERROR |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10198189 |
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