A new high‐resolution nationwide aboveground carbon map for Brazil

Abstract

Brazil is home to the largest tracts of tropical vegetation in the world, harbouring high levels of biodiversity and carbon. Several biomass maps have been produced for Brazil, using different approaches and methods, and for different purposes. These maps have been used to estimate historic, recent, and future carbon emissions from land use change (LUC). It can be difficult to determine which map to use for what purpose. The implications of using an unsuitable map can be significant, since the maps have large differences, both in terms of total carbon storage and its spatial distribution. This paper presents comparisons of Brazil's new 'official' carbon map; that is, the map used in the third national communication to the UNFCCC in 2016, with the former official map, and four carbon maps from the scientific literature. General strengths and weaknesses of the different maps are identified, including their suitability for different types of studies. No carbon map was found suitable for studies concerned with existing land use/cover (LULC) and LUC outside of existing forests, partly because they do not represent the current LULC sufficiently well, and partly because they generally overestimate carbon values for agricultural land. A new map of aboveground carbon is presented, which was created based on data from existing maps and an upto-date LULC map. This new map reflects current LULC, has high accuracy and resolution (50 m), and a national coverage. It can be a useful alternative for scientific studies and policy initiatives concerned with existing LULC and LUC outside of existing forests, especially at local scales when high resolution is necessary, and/or outside the Amazon biome. We identify five ongoing climate policy initiatives in Brazil that can benefit from using this map.

The threat of political bargaining to climate mitigation in Brazil

“…The biomass map accounts for native vegetation aboveground and belowground, live biomass, deadwood, and litter for specific vegetation types across the country. This represents large improvements in relation to the map of the Second National Communication (SCN, acronym in Portuguese) 54 . In summary, these advances are the following:…”

A Review of Regional and Global Gridded Forest Biomass Datasets

“…Based on existing biomass maps and an up-to-date Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) map, Englund et al [104] presented a new high resolution (50 m) nation-wide aboveground carbon map for Brazil. They evaluated this map with an independent reference dataset from Avitabile et al [103], and found high consistency between the two datasets with a corresponding R 2 of 0.59.…”

Stimulus for land grabbing and deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon

“…Below is a description of the methodology steps: We estimated the carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions for the two future scenarios using the following approach. First, using the function Zonal Statists from ArcGIS 10.3, we calculated for each scenario the total aboveground carbon (AGC) within the cells at risk of deforestation [18]. Next, we converted the AGC to CO 2 , by multiplying by 44/12 (units of CO 2 per units of carbon).…”