108
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
2 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Quantifying and understanding carbon storage and sequestration within the Eastern Arc Mountains of Tanzania, a tropical biodiversity hotspot

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisher
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Background The carbon stored in vegetation varies across tropical landscapes due to a complex mix of climatic and edaphic variables, as well as direct human interventions such as deforestation and forest degradation. Mapping and monitoring this variation is essential if policy developments such as REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) are to be known to have succeeded or failed. Results We produce a map of carbon storage across the watershed of the Tanzanian Eastern Arc Mountains (33.9 million ha) using 1,611 forest inventory plots, and correlations with associated climate, soil and disturbance data. As expected, tropical forest stores more carbon per hectare (182 Mg C ha-1) than woody savanna (51 Mg C ha-1). However, woody savanna is the largest aggregate carbon store, with 0.49 Pg C over 9.6 million ha. We estimate the whole landscape stores 1.3 Pg C, significantly higher than most previous estimates for the region. The 95% Confidence Interval for this method (0.9 to 3.2 Pg C) is larger than simpler look-up table methods (1.5 to 1.6 Pg C), suggesting simpler methods may underestimate uncertainty. Using a small number of inventory plots with two censuses (n = 43) to assess changes in carbon storage, and applying the same mapping procedures, we found that carbon storage in the tree-dominated ecosystems has decreased, though not significantly, at a mean rate of 1.47 Mg C ha-1 yr-1 (c. 2% of the stocks of carbon per year). Conclusions The most influential variables on carbon storage in the region are anthropogenic, particularly historical logging, as noted by the largest coefficient of explanatory variable on the response variable. Of the non-anthropogenic factors, a negative correlation with air temperature and a positive correlation with water availability dominate, having smaller p-values than historical logging but also smaller influence. High carbon storage is typically found far from the commercial capital, in locations with a low monthly temperature range, without a strong dry season, and in areas that have not suffered from historical logging. The results imply that policy interventions could retain carbon stored in vegetation and likely successfully slow or reverse carbon emissions.

          Related collections

          Most cited references135

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: found
          • Article: not found

          Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities.

          Conservationists are far from able to assist all species under threat, if only for lack of funding. This places a premium on priorities: how can we support the most species at the least cost? One way is to identify 'biodiversity hotspots' where exceptional concentrations of endemic species are undergoing exceptional loss of habitat. As many as 44% of all species of vascular plants and 35% of all species in four vertebrate groups are confined to 25 hotspots comprising only 1.4% of the land surface of the Earth. This opens the way for a 'silver bullet' strategy on the part of conservation planners, focusing on these hotspots in proportion to their share of the world's species at risk.
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Book: not found

              Modern Applied Statistics with S

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Carbon Balance and Management
                Carbon Balance Manage
                Springer Science and Business Media LLC
                1750-0680
                December 2014
                April 28 2014
                December 2014
                : 9
                : 1
                Article
                10.1186/1750-0680-9-2
                bfa8d1e9-3d53-4822-be6b-77fd324291dc
                © 2014

                http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0

                History

                Comments

                Comment on this article