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Incorporating Climate Considerations into the National Forest Basic Plan in Japan
Published in Roger A. Sedjo, R. Neil Sampson, Joe Wisniewski, in Forestry, 2020
Decreases in the world’s tropical forests has become a major problem because of the release of large amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (FAO 1993; Houghton et al., 1991). Since Japan is the greatest importer of tropical wood in the world (FAO, 1993), there have been some suggestions that Japan should soon stop importing tropical wood. It has been proposed to decrease the import of tropical wood over the next 10 years. However, a quantitative analysis has not been carried out because this matter is largely a political problem with a lot of uncertainty (Brooks, 1994). Furthermore, there is also an energy problem since wood, a heavy product, must be transported for long distances (Haynes 1994). However, this problem is not treated in this paper because it focuses on the reduction of global warming from the perspective of wood supply.
Forests
Published in Yeqiao Wang, Terrestrial Ecosystems and Biodiversity, 2020
Concern for global warming is responsible for another way of looking at tropical rain forest: as a store of carbon compounds that are easily converted to and from the major greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.[11] All organisms contain carbon, as do soils, but in tropical rain forests, most is in the large trees. Plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere when they photosynthesize in sunlight, and return it through respiration and when a part or all of the plant dies. An undisturbed rain forest is a massive carbon store, more or less in equilibrium, with plant photosynthesis balanced by the respiration of plants, animals, and microbes. Disturbances, such as logging and firewood collection, release part of this store into the atmosphere. Conversion to another land use, such as a soybean field, releases an amount of carbon (as carbon dioxide) equal to the difference between the amount stored in the forest, including the soil, and the amount in the crop. The degradation and clearance of tropical forests is a source of carbon dioxide second in magnitude only to fossil fuels, but these very large emissions are more or less offset at present by an equally large uptake by the surviving forests.[11] Much of this uptake is in forests regrowing after logging or clearance, which make more than a third of all tropical forests, but even intact forests are currently taking up more carbon dioxide than they release.
Satellite Imaging and Sensing
Published in John G. Webster, Halit Eren, Measurement, Instrumentation, and Sensors Handbook, 2017
Getting accurate quantitative information about the distribution and the areal extent of the Earth’s vegetation formations is a basic requirement in understanding the dynamics of the major ecosystems. Among all land transformations most critical to study for global change research, the assessment of tropical forests is one of the most important [22–25]. The tropical forest biome forms 7% of the Earth land surface, and its extensive loss could have a major impact on the future of the Earth (habitat fragmentation, species extinction, soil degradation, global climatic modifications, etc.). Previous studies have shown that in the last 2 decades, 50% of the areal extent of tropical forests might have been lost to deforestation [23]. At present, there is a wide range of estimates of the areal extent of tropical forests and of their rates of deforestation. Therefore, there is a great need to produce accurate and up-to-date measurements concerning the Tropical Forest worldwide. A range of different sensors must be utilized for such applications.
Historical trends of degradation, loss, and recovery in the tropical forest reserves of Ghana
Published in International Journal of Digital Earth, 2022
Michael C. Wimberly, Francis K. Dwomoh, Izaya Numata, Foster Mensah, Jacob Amoako, Dawn M. Nekorchuk, Andrea McMahon
Tropical forests provide one of the largest global carbon sinks, with intact forests sequestering 1.02 Pg of carbon per year and forest regrowth taking up an additional 1.72 Pg (Pan et al. 2011). They also furnish habitat for half of the world’s terrestrial plant and animal species and supply vital ecosystem services to much of the world (Malhi et al. 2014). Satellite remote sensing is an essential data source for monitoring tropical forest change. Globally, land conversion to agriculture is a major driver of tropical deforestation (Gibbs et al. 2010), and the capabilities of satellite remote sensing for monitoring land use change and forest loss are well established (Tucker and Townshend 2000). Many of the tropical forests that remain are impacted by anthropogenic and natural disturbances that do not cause complete canopy removal. These disturbances result in degradation, which is broadly defined as change in forest structure and composition that decreases the provision of ecosystem services (Thompson et al. 2013) or reduces ecosystem resilience to future perturbations (Ghazoul et al. 2015). Compared to deforestation, the slower and more subtle effects of degradation are challenging to detect from space using sensors with moderate to high spatial resolution such as MODIS (250–1000 m pixel size) and Landsat (30 m pixel size). Thus, there is a need to improve satellite-based monitoring approaches so that they are sensitive to a broader range of disturbances, including forest degradation. These techniques must also be translated into practical tools that can be used sustainably by stakeholders in tropical regions.
Evaluation of forest CO2 fluxes from sonde measurements in three different climatological areas including Borneo, Malaysia, and Iriomote and Hokkaido, Japan
Published in Tellus B: Chemical and Physical Meteorology, 2018
Shohei Nomura, Hitoshi Mukai, Yukio Terao, Kentaro Takagi, Maznorizan Mohamad, Mohad Firdaus Jahaya
The estimate of the uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the terrestrial biosphere (2.6 ± 1.2 PgC yr−1 in terms of the global annual average from 2000 to 2009) (IPCC, 2013) is associated with a relatively large uncertainty compared to that by the ocean (2.3 ± 0.7 PgC yr−1), and this uncertainty is partly due to the difficulties associated with estimating the variation of the land flux. Variations in the land flux are driven by the effects of disturbances and changes induced by natural and anthropogenic origins, such as changes in temperature and precipitation (Malhi and Wright, 2004), forest fires, logging practices and plantings (Amiro et al., 2006; Ramankutty et al., 2007; Hirata et al., 2014); these changes cannot easily be monitored at different temporal and spatial scales because of the complicated features of terrestrial surfaces. Nevertheless, the CO2 flux of the terrestrial surface has to be accurately evaluated because both increases and decreases in the flux directly affect the accumulation rate of atmospheric CO2, which is the largest driving factor for climate change. Especially in Southeast Asia, tropical forests are very important in terms of emissions from frequent large forest fire events and continuous land use change.
Quantitative analysis of the impact of climate change and human activities on vegetation NPP in the Qilian Mountain
Published in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal, 2023
Anle Yang, Han Zhang, Xuejie Yang, Xiaoping Zhang
In northeast China, forest NPP is mainly influenced by solar radiation and grassland NPP is most closely related to precipitation (Yan et al. 2021). Annual precipitation changes on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau have a weak negative impact on vegetation NPP, and the increase in mean annual temperature have a significant positive impact on vegetation NPP, and its ecosystem is affected by climate change (Gao et al. 2013). Forest NPP is determined by precipitation, temperature and solar radiation, while cropland and grassland NPP are mainly influenced by precipitation in Inner Mongolia (Hao et al. 2021). With the coupling of climate and human activities such as the implementation of grazing bans, increased rainfall and arable land area also promote vegetation NPP growth (Wang et al. 2017). Climate extremes such as El Niño and La Niña are important factors affecting vegetation growth, and deforestation is also very damaging to tropical forests (Mohamed et al. 2004). Human activities have a negative impact on grassland NPP, and grassland degradation is mainly caused by human activities in northwest China(Li et al. 2021a). In recent years, the vegetation coverage of the Qilian Mountains has generally shown a trend of recovery and increase (Ma et al. 2018; Qin et al. 2021). Temporally, vegetation coverage shows a significant positive correlation with temperature in spring, and with precipitation in summer, while there is no significant correlation between vegetation coverage and climatic factors in autumn and winter(Wu et al. 2015). Spatially, precipitation and temperature had a significantly higher impact in the west than in the east (Zhang et al. 2021).