Live aboveground carbon stocks in natural forests of Colombia

• We estimate the carbon stored in the aboveground biomass of the forests of Colombia.
• We analyzed the influence of allometric model and the estimation method employed.
• We proposed a method to utilize existing data to assess forest carbon stocks.
• Our results reinforce the need for more local and regional allometries.

Emission factors are essential in order to accurately account and report land use and land use change emissions due to deforestation at a national level, in accordance with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reporting guidelines. Nonetheless, in many tropical countries its availability is still scarce, especially in Colombia where a National Forest Inventory is lacking. Here, we estimate the amount of carbon stored in the live aboveground biomass of the forests of Colombia, using data from 4981 sampling forest plots of various sizes established between 1990 and 2014. Our study included an analysis of the influence of the choice of allometric model and the carbon density estimation method employed in the estimation. We found that the most conservative total mean value for the entire country was 226.9 ± 4.5 Mg ha−1, obtained by using a previous set of allometric equations developed for the natural forest of Colombia and an inverse-variance weighting that accounts for the variation in plot size, which represents a potential stock of 6.44 ± 0.13 Pg of carbon. Thus, our study provides a method to utilize existing sample data to assess forest carbon stocks at national level, make available conservative carbon stocks estimates for the natural forests of Colombia, and reports enhanced and adequate information subject to national capabilities and policies in the context of results-based payments for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the conservation.