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Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees

Efforts to incentivize the reduction of carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation require accurate carbon accounting. The extensive tropical forest of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a target for such efforts and yet local carbon estimates are few. Previous estimates, based on models of n...

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Autores principales: Vincent, John B, Henning, Bridget, Saulei, Simon, Sosanika, Gibson, Weiblen, George D
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4461161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26074730
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aec.12187
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author Vincent, John B
Henning, Bridget
Saulei, Simon
Sosanika, Gibson
Weiblen, George D
author_facet Vincent, John B
Henning, Bridget
Saulei, Simon
Sosanika, Gibson
Weiblen, George D
author_sort Vincent, John B
collection PubMed
description Efforts to incentivize the reduction of carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation require accurate carbon accounting. The extensive tropical forest of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a target for such efforts and yet local carbon estimates are few. Previous estimates, based on models of neotropical vegetation applied to PNG forest plots, did not consider such factors as the unique species composition of New Guinea vegetation, local variation in forest biomass, or the contribution of small trees. We analysed all trees >1 cm in diameter at breast height (DBH) in Melanesia's largest forest plot (Wanang) to assess local spatial variation and the role of small trees in carbon storage. Above-ground living biomass (AGLB) of trees averaged 210.72 Mg  ha(−1) at Wanang. Carbon storage at Wanang was somewhat lower than in other lowland tropical forests, whereas local variation among 1-ha subplots and the contribution of small trees to total AGLB were substantially higher. We speculate that these differences may be attributed to the dynamics of Wanang forest where erosion of a recently uplifted and unstable terrain appears to be a major source of natural disturbance. These findings emphasize the need for locally calibrated forest carbon estimates if accurate landscape level valuation and monetization of carbon is to be achieved. Such estimates aim to situate PNG forests in the global carbon context and provide baseline information needed to improve the accuracy of PNG carbon monitoring schemes.
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spelling pubmed-44611612015-06-12 Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees Vincent, John B Henning, Bridget Saulei, Simon Sosanika, Gibson Weiblen, George D Austral Ecol Original Articles Efforts to incentivize the reduction of carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation require accurate carbon accounting. The extensive tropical forest of Papua New Guinea (PNG) is a target for such efforts and yet local carbon estimates are few. Previous estimates, based on models of neotropical vegetation applied to PNG forest plots, did not consider such factors as the unique species composition of New Guinea vegetation, local variation in forest biomass, or the contribution of small trees. We analysed all trees >1 cm in diameter at breast height (DBH) in Melanesia's largest forest plot (Wanang) to assess local spatial variation and the role of small trees in carbon storage. Above-ground living biomass (AGLB) of trees averaged 210.72 Mg  ha(−1) at Wanang. Carbon storage at Wanang was somewhat lower than in other lowland tropical forests, whereas local variation among 1-ha subplots and the contribution of small trees to total AGLB were substantially higher. We speculate that these differences may be attributed to the dynamics of Wanang forest where erosion of a recently uplifted and unstable terrain appears to be a major source of natural disturbance. These findings emphasize the need for locally calibrated forest carbon estimates if accurate landscape level valuation and monetization of carbon is to be achieved. Such estimates aim to situate PNG forests in the global carbon context and provide baseline information needed to improve the accuracy of PNG carbon monitoring schemes. BlackWell Publishing Ltd 2015-04 2014-09-25 /pmc/articles/PMC4461161/ /pubmed/26074730 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aec.12187 Text en © 2014 The Authors Austral Ecology published by Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd on behalf of Ecological Society of Australia. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Articles
Vincent, John B
Henning, Bridget
Saulei, Simon
Sosanika, Gibson
Weiblen, George D
Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees
title Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees
title_full Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees
title_fullStr Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees
title_full_unstemmed Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees
title_short Forest carbon in lowland Papua New Guinea: Local variation and the importance of small trees
title_sort forest carbon in lowland papua new guinea: local variation and the importance of small trees
topic Original Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4461161/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26074730
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aec.12187
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