Spatial optimization of carbon-stocking projects across Africa integrating stocking potential with co-benefits and feasibility

Abstract

Carbon offset projects through forestation are employed within the emissions trading framework to store carbon. Yet, information about the potential of landscapes to stock carbon, essential to the design of offset projects, is often lacking. Here, based on data on vegetation carbon, climate and soil, we quantify the potential for carbon storage in woody vegetation across tropical Africa. The ability of offset projects to produce co-benefits for ecosystems and people is then quantified. When co-benefits such as biodiversity conservation are considered, the top-ranked sites are sometimes different to sites selected purely for their carbon-stocking potential, although they still possess up to 92% of the latter carbon-stocking potential. This work provides the first continental-scale assessment of which areas may provide the greatest direct and indirect benefits from carbon storage reforestation projects at the smallest costs and risks, providing crucial information for prioritization of investments in carbon storage projects.

Reforestation or conservation? The attributes of old growth grasslands in South Africa

“…Remote sensing by satellites has opened up new methods for global scale analyses of above-ground woody biomass allowing the identification of areas with anomalously low biomass for a given region. These are areas with the potential for large gains in woody biomass since environmental conditions can support forests, but the vegetation currently consists of open ecosystems such as grasslands and savannahs [7,8]. Very large areas of the world have been mapped as suitable for forest restoration by the World Resources Institute [8,9] with the African continent having the most potential of all continents.…”

Functional identity explains carbon sequestration in a 77‐year‐old experimental tropical plantation

“…However, implementation of such programs frequently results in plantations of fast growing monocultures of non-native species (Cossalter and Pye-Smith 2003). While this approach guarantees high carbon sequestration rates, it ignores other important co-benefits of reforestation in the tropics, such as natural forest restoration and biodiversity recovery, for which native species are better suited (Lamb et al 2005, Greve et al 2013. But the combination of a bigger species pool, along with the lack of knowledge on the species in the tropics, makes the selection of appropriate species difficult and hazardous for the success of a carbon-offset project (van Breugel et al 2011).…”

Optimising carbon sequestration in arid and semiarid rangelands

“…Localised benchmarks of potential C stocks can be derived from remnant ecosystems or spatially dependent environmental variables (Greve et al, 2013). This equates to determining 'carbon carrying capacity' (Roxburgh et al, 2006).…”