Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6347363 | Remote Sensing of Environment | 2013 | 14 Pages |
Abstract
The boreal forest accounts for one-third of global forests, but remains largely inaccessible to ground-based measurements and monitoring. It contains large quantities of carbon in its vegetation and soils, and research suggests that it will be subject to increasingly severe climate-driven disturbance. We employ a suite of ground-, airborne- and space-based measurement techniques to derive the first satellite LiDAR-based estimates of aboveground carbon for the entire circumboreal forest biome. Incorporating these inventory techniques with uncertainty analysis, we estimate total aboveground carbon of 38 ± 3.1 Pg. This boreal forest carbon is mostly concentrated from 50 to 55° N in eastern Canada and from 55 to 60° N in eastern Eurasia. Both of these regions are expected to warm > 3 °C by 2100, and monitoring the effects of warming on these stocks is important to understanding its future carbon balance. Our maps establish a baseline for future quantification of circumboreal carbon and the described technique should provide a robust method for future monitoring of the spatial and temporal changes of the aboveground carbon content.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Earth and Planetary Sciences
Computers in Earth Sciences
Authors
Christopher S.R. Neigh, Ross F. Nelson, K. Jon Ranson, Hank A. Margolis, Paul M. Montesano, Guoqing Sun, Viacheslav Kharuk, Erik Næsset, Michael A. Wulder, Hans-Erik Andersen,