A Deeper Understanding of Deforestation
This peer-reviewed article is the “Annual Carbon Emission from Deforestation” published in the journal PLoS ONE on May 2015. The article states that the current methods of assessing the carbon emissions from deforestation are inconsistent and are not done frequently enough to be valuable. The authors argue that deforestation has high variability, and that its rate can be estimated better by understanding the different annual trends and that neighboring areas can have vastly differing trends. Finding this trend is key into understanding and quantifying the deforestation rates and these trends can help deforestation mitigation programs target locations more accurately. Through its data collection method and its analysis, this article provides deeper insight into deforestation and carbon emissions. It also demonstrates the use of the annual trends and how this work can be improved in the future.
The article is based on research done to compare the deforestation rate to the carbon emission rate in the Amazon Basin. This data was collected using time-series satellite data from Landsat satellites and the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Vegetation Continuous Fields (MODIS VCF) over the span of 10 years. The datasets were separated into yearly intervals. The study found that carbon emission rates from deforestation differ not only from region to region, but also from year to year. The author argues that this is more accurate than past studies that were done by the United Nations’ (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) every 5 or 10 years and it relied on each country’s reporting of forest cover change. Deforestation has also invaded into forests of high carbon density, meaning that there will be more carbon emission per deforested area. Since low carbon density forests have been cut down during the study period, the author closes stating that the remaining forest cover and its carbon density has to continue to be monitored in order to accurately estimate carbon changes in the future.
As the article stated, deforestation has become a major source of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. Due to this we should keep a better record of this and analyze the effects of deforestation more deeply. Now that deforestation has hit areas of high biomass, the emission rate will increase if left unattended. Since 2008, the forests cleared in Brazil, Peru, and Colombia has had a higher carbon density that the forests cleared prior to that year, meaning that the annual trend of emissions will increase. This trend is also important because it is a quantitative value that can be used by deforestation mitigation programs, such as UN’s Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). This study can be useful to those that are looking to perform a similar study in their area. Programs like REDD+ can use this data to chose which locations are in need of their ecosystem services the most.
With the MODIS VCF technology improving, datasets can be reduced into monthly intervals to produce more accurate trends. Now that emission rates are known to vary from one region to another, there can be more precise studies can be made, not only of the Amazons, but also of other areas of the world. This gives more insight into pinpointing forests that are in dire need of protection.
References
Song, X., Huang, C., Saatchi, S. S., Hansen, M. C., & Townshend, J. R. (2015). Annual Carbon Emissions from Deforestation in the Amazon Basin between 2000 and 2010. Plos ONE, 10(5), 1-21. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0126754
