TY - JOUR
T1 - Conservation policy and the measurement of forests
AU - Sexton, Joseph O.
AU - Noojipady, Praveen
AU - Song, Xiao Peng
AU - Feng, Min
AU - Song, Dan Xia
AU - Kim, Do Hyung
AU - Anand, Anupam
AU - Huang, Chengquan
AU - Channan, Saurabh
AU - Pimm, Stuart L.
AU - Townshend, John R.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding was provided by the following NASA programmes: Making Earth System Data Records for Use in Research Environments (NNX08AP33A-MEASURES), Land Cover and Land Use Change (NNX08AN72G-LCLUC), Carbon Cycle Science (NNH13ZDA001N-CARBON), and Earth System Science Research Using Data and Products from Terra, Aqua, and Acrimsat Satellites (NNH06ZDA001N-EOS). X.-P.S. was also supported by NASA’s Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF) Program (NNX12AN92H). P.N. was also supported by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation’s Department for Civil Society under the Norwegian Forest and Climate Initiative. The opinions expressed do not represent those of the Global Environmental Facility or the World Bank Group. Data processing and analysis were performed at the Global Land Cover Facility (www.landcover.org) in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland in service of the Global Forest Cover Change Project (www.forestcover.org), a partnership of the University of Maryland Global Land Cover Facility and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. We thank A. Whitehurst, C. Jenkins and N. Aguilar-Amuchastegui for comments and T. B. Murphy for political insights.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited.
PY - 2016/1/27
Y1 - 2016/1/27
N2 - Deforestation is a major driver of climate change and the major driver of biodiversity loss. Yet the essential baseline for monitoring forest cover - the global area of forests - remains uncertain despite rapid technological advances and international consensus on conserving target extents of ecosystems. Previous satellite-based estimates of global forest area range from 32.1×10 6 km 2 to 41.4×10 6 km 2. Here, we show that the major reason underlying this discrepancy is ambiguity in the term "forest". Each of the >800 official definitions that are capable of satellite measurement relies on a criterion of percentage tree cover. This criterion may range from >10% to >30% cover under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Applying the range to the first global, high-resolution map of percentage tree cover reveals a discrepancy of 19.3×10 6 km 2, some 13% of Earth's land area. The discrepancy within the tropics alone involves a difference of 45.2 Gt C of biomass, valued at US$1 trillion. To more effectively link science and policy to ecosystems, we must now refine forest monitoring, reporting and verification to focus on ecological measurements that are more directly relevant to ecosystem function, to biomass and carbon, and to climate and biodiversity.
AB - Deforestation is a major driver of climate change and the major driver of biodiversity loss. Yet the essential baseline for monitoring forest cover - the global area of forests - remains uncertain despite rapid technological advances and international consensus on conserving target extents of ecosystems. Previous satellite-based estimates of global forest area range from 32.1×10 6 km 2 to 41.4×10 6 km 2. Here, we show that the major reason underlying this discrepancy is ambiguity in the term "forest". Each of the >800 official definitions that are capable of satellite measurement relies on a criterion of percentage tree cover. This criterion may range from >10% to >30% cover under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Applying the range to the first global, high-resolution map of percentage tree cover reveals a discrepancy of 19.3×10 6 km 2, some 13% of Earth's land area. The discrepancy within the tropics alone involves a difference of 45.2 Gt C of biomass, valued at US$1 trillion. To more effectively link science and policy to ecosystems, we must now refine forest monitoring, reporting and verification to focus on ecological measurements that are more directly relevant to ecosystem function, to biomass and carbon, and to climate and biodiversity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84955617371&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/nclimate2816
DO - 10.1038/nclimate2816
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84955617371
SN - 1758-678X
VL - 6
SP - 192
EP - 196
JO - Nature Climate Change
JF - Nature Climate Change
IS - 2
ER -