What is the point of forest carbon monitoring in REDD-plus?
Sato Tamotsu (Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute(FFPRI))

Session 1

What is the point of forest carbon monitoring in REDD-plus?
Sato Tamotsu (Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute (FFPRI))
Contents

There are four main topics I would like to cover.
carbon monitoring.

First, I will briefly explain the mechanism for forest

Second, I will briefly explain why carbon is not the only target.

forest degradation is an indispensable component.
degradation, as well as deforestation.

Third, I will explain why

Emissions from forests include emissions from forest

I will also explain the reason for that.

Fourth, I will explain how we

can conduct monitoring continuously.
What is “forest carbon monitoring”?

First, I would like to explain the mechanism for conducting carbon monitoring.
targets a relatively large area and tries to understand the carbon stock in the area.

Forest carbon monitoring
At the REDD Research andDevelopment Center, we use the same methodology as IPCC, and use remote sensing to identify changes inthe forest area.

We also do ground-based investigations of the carbon stock per area, and we multiply theforest area and the averaged carbon stock to identify the overall carbon stock.

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We recommend this approach.

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REDD has been around for 10 years and various methodologies have been proposed.

An issue arises.

How can we reduce the cost of monitoring without reducing the accuracy?

is evolving day by day.

TechnologyIf we spend more money on technology, we can naturally get more accurate results,

but we need a balance between accuracy and cost.

Right now, there is a need to achieve higher accuracy, whilealso controlling costs.

FFPRI has developed the REDD-plus Cookbook Annex1, which is a survey manual.
measure the carbon stock per area, you can use “Vol. 1: Ground-Based Inventory2.”

If you want to

If you want to measure

the carbon stock using an Allometric equation, you can use “Vol. 2: Destructive Sampling for Tree Biomass3.”
You can also use the manual for ground-truth surveys or remote sensing analysis.
you to get high-accuracy measurement results without incurring a lot of cost.

These guidebooks allow

These are materials that theREDD Research and Development Center has developed.

http://redd.ffpri.affrc.go.jp/pub_db/publications/cookbook_annex/index_en.html
http://redd.ffpri.affrc.go.jp/pub_db/publications/cookbook_annex/_img/cookbook_annex_vol1_en.pdf
3 http://redd.ffpri.affrc.go.jp/pub_db/publications/cookbook_annex/_img/cookbook_annex_vol2_en.pdf
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What is the point of forest carbon monitoring in REDD-plus?
Sato Tamotsu (Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute(FFPRI))

Session 1

Carbon is not the only target

Carbon monitoring is not limited to carbon.
benefits can be gained from the forest.
“ecosystem services.”

The forest provides us with various services and as such is called

This time, we have been focusing on carbon sequestration, but that is not the onlybenefit.

We can also conserve biodiversity.

carbon.

We also need to monitor biodiversity.

a car, one cannot move without the other.
in mind.

As Dr. Buszko-Briggs presented this morning, multiple

As I said in the beginning, carbon monitoring is not limited toBiodiversity and carbon sequestration are like two wheels of

For carbon monitoring, we also need to always keep biodiversity

In addition to carbon sequestration, we can get biodiversity conservation and various other services

from the forest.

We need to keep all these benefits in mind.

This is an example.

This is from a recently announced report.

forests around the world.

It is based on a bunch of meta-data fromIn the figure, the x-axis shows tree species richness, and the y-axis shows

productivity.

It shows the higher the tree species diversity, the higher the capability of the forest to sequester

forest carbon.

It shows that protecting biodiversity and the condition of a forest can contribute to having

better forest carbon sinks and more possibly sequestration.

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This is from our original data.

We made an experimental plot of six hectares in Malaysia, and wemeasured the number of species of trees with a diameter at breast height of five centimeters or more, and we
found over 500 species.

Some had a diameter of more than 90 centimeters, but there were other trees thatnever became more than 10 centimeters in stem diameter.

If we think only about carbon sequestration, wemight tend to focus only on the large trees and focus on how many big trees there are, but when we think aboutbiodiversity, we need to see that one-fourth of the overall tree species have a diameter of less than 10centimeters.

We tend to focus just on measuring the diameter of large trees, but when we think about diversity,

we also need to focus on the smaller tree species.
Forest degradation is an indispensable component

Moving on to third topic, I will talk about forest degradation.
good quality forest degrades due to various impacts.

Forest degradation is a situation where aForests are defined differently by different countries.

It may be based on the canopy coverage or the height or area of the canopy.

If it exceeds a certain level, thenit is considered to be a forest.

There may be some areas that are defined as forest, but have degraded andhave a lower quantity of carbon.

Such degraded forests are going to be an issue in the future.

why.

Let me explain

A 2017 report said that GHG emissions from forests are the result of both deforestation and forest

degradation.

GHG emissions from forest degradation are only a quarter of the total, but it was found that104What is the point of forest carbon monitoring in REDD-plus?
Sato Tamotsu (Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute(FFPRI))

Session 1

out of 74 developing countries, 28 countries had GHG emissions from forest degradation exceed emissions
from deforestation.

In other words, it is important to identify the emissions due to forest degradation in eachcountry; otherwise it will not be possible to have an accurate understanding of the overall GHG emissions.
That is why evaluation of forest degradation is an indispensable component.

There are drivers of forest degradation that are uniquely different from deforestation.
logging which can be both legal and illegal.
or the production of charcoal.

One example isSome other examples are forest fires, collection of wood for fuel,Livestock grazing in the forest can be another factor.

These factors interact

with each other to cause forest degradation.

On the left is one of our research areas which shows a forest fire of a peat forest in Palangkaraya inIndonesia.

Normally, there would be very few forest fires in a peat forest, but when the ground is dug andthe earth dries up, it becomes more likely.
The right shows a forest in Cambodia.

Forest degradation makes the occurrence of forest fires like thismore likely.

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This is an example from Brazil of an unburned forest in good shape, as seen in the top figure.
has been burned, the trees that are weak to fire disappear.

Once itEach time a fire occurs, the trees that are weak tofire become less in number, so the composition of tree species changes the more disturbances from fire thereare.

The more forest fires there are, the more difficult it is for the forests to recover.

about the forest fires in Australia, which you perhaps have seen on the news.
recovery from that forest fire will be very difficult.

Everybody is hearing

I think everyone believes that aThe more fires that occur, the more good trees disappear.

As the forests are disturbed by fires again and again, the carbon stock also declines.

We need to grasp

accurately how much the carbon stock declines as a result of forest fires.

Here is an example from Myanmar.
the Forest Research Institute (FRI).

This is a result of cooperation with the Forest Department (FD) andThere are also pictures from Asia Air Survey4.

In some areas, bamboo

is very common, but in other areas, there is very little bamboo and a lot of normal trees.
is very important to understand the carbon stock.

Bamboo coverage

It is well-known that forest fires facilitate bamboo

dominance, so it is important to identify tree species, as well as non-tree species such as bamboo and palms.
The measurement of non-tree species is important for the evaluation of carbon stock and forest degradation.
One of the next steps is to develop methodology to evaluate forest degradation through the use of remote4

https://www.ajiko.co.jp/en/index.html

106What is the point of forest carbon monitoring in REDD-plus?
Sato Tamotsu (Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute(FFPRI))
sensing data.

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My talk so far has been based on ground-based investigations, but we need to work from theground and combine the ground data with remote sensing data in the future.

Evaluation using remote sensing

to understand the level of forest degradation will be very important in the future.
How do we conduct monitoring continuously?

Finally, I would like to talk about why we need long-term monitoring systems.

In the diagram on theright, we can see the situation of a tropical forest in Indonesia showing the above-ground biomass after a fireand selective logging.

At the top, we can see the line for pioneer species, which grow very rapidly after a fire.

These species can only survive in areas where there is a lot of sunlight.

Late successional species normallygrow under good conditions under the canopy, but once a fire has occurred and there is disturbance, it is very
hard for the late successional species to grow, whereas the pioneer species grow very rapidly.
just one point in time, we cannot understand the situation.

We need to understand the change of species overtime as the recovery of different species have different trajectories.
might underestimate or overestimate the carbon stock.

By evaluating

If we evaluate just one point in time, weThat is why we need long-term, continuousmonitoring.

In order to achieve long-term monitoring, I think there are two main points.

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The first is to reduce theSession 1
inaccuracy of measurements by defining rules for measurement.
monitoring for 20 or 30 years, so we need clear rules.

It is impossible for one person to continue

Just as soccer or rugby can be played by different

countries and by different generations because of clear rules, we can accumulate accurate data if we do thesame.

The other important point is to do capacity building.

The picture on the right shows the training ofuniversity students by the Forestry Department of Myanmar.

Through training like this, the future generationneeds to carry on the knowledge of the previous generation.

We need cooperation from not only scientists and engineers, but also from the local people who benefit
from the forests.

Without their cooperation, it will be very difficult to have long-term monitoring.

Finally, I would like to share a quote that I like.
century.

This is a quote by Albert Pine, an author from the 19th

He said, “What we do for ourselves dies with us.

and is immortal.”

What we do for others and the world remains

I believe this thinking is very in line with REDD.

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