Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2018
Authors
Signe Kynding Borgen Gry Alfredsen Johannes Breidenbach Lise Dalsgaard Gunnhild Søgaard Aaron SmithAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Andreas Treu Katrin Zimmer Christian Brischke Erik Larnøy Lone Ross Foued Aloui Simon M Cragg Per Otto Flæte Miha Humar Mats Westin Luisa M. S. Borges John WilliamsAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Uganda designated 16% of its land as Protected Area (PA). The original goal was natural resources, habitat and biodiversity conservation. However, PAs also offer great potential for carbon conservation in the context of climate change mitigation. Drawing on a wall-to-wall map of forest carbon change for the entire Uganda, that was developed using two Digital Elevation Model (DEM) datasets for the period 2000–2012, we (1) quantified forest carbon gain and loss within 713 PAs and their external buffer zones, (2) tested variations in forest carbon change among management categories, and (3) evaluated the effectiveness of PAs and the prevalence of local leakage in terms of forest carbon. The net annual forest carbon gain in PAs of Uganda was 0.22 ± 1.36 t/ha, but a significant proportion (63%) of the PAs exhibited a net carbon loss. Further, carbon gain and loss varied significantly among management categories. About 37% of the PAs were “effective”, i.e., gained or at least maintained forest carbon during the period. Nevertheless, carbon losses in the external buffer zones of those effective PAs significantly contrast with carbon gains inside of the PA boundaries, providing evidence of leakage and thus, isolation. The combined carbon losses inside the boundaries of a large number of PAs, together with leakage in external buffer zones suggest that PAs, regardless of the management categories, are threatened by deforestation and forest degradation. If Uganda will have to benefit from carbon conservation from its large number of PAs through climate change mitigation mechanisms such as REDD+, there is an urgent need to look into some of the current PA management approaches, and design protection strategies that account for the surrounding landscapes and communities outside of the PAs.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Svein Solberg Johannes May Wiley Steven Bogren Johannes Breidenbach Torfinn Torp Belachew Gizachew ZelekeAbstract
Monitoring changes in forest height, biomass and carbon stock is important for understanding the drivers of forest change, clarifying the geography and magnitude of the fluxes of the global carbon budget and for providing input data to REDD+. The objective of this study was to investigate the feasibility of covering these monitoring needs using InSAR DEM changes over time and associated estimates of forest biomass change and corresponding net CO2 emissions. A wall-to-wall map of net forest change for Uganda with its tropical forests was derived from two Digital Elevation Model (DEM) datasets, namely the SRTM acquired in 2000 and TanDEM-X acquired around 2012 based on Interferometric SAR (InSAR) and based on the height of the phase center. Errors in the form of bias, as well as parallel lines and belts having a certain height shift in the SRTM DEM were removed, and the penetration difference between X- and C-band SAR into the forest canopy was corrected. On average, we estimated X-band InSAR height to decrease by 7 cm during the period 2000–2012, corresponding to an estimated annual CO2 emission of 5 Mt for the entirety of Uganda. The uncertainty of this estimate given as a 95% confidence interval was 2.9–7.1 Mt. The presented method has a number of issues that require further research, including the particular SRTM biases and artifact errors; the penetration difference between the X- and C-band; the final height adjustment; and the validity of a linear conversion from InSAR height change to AGB change. However, the results corresponded well to other datasets on forest change and AGB stocks, concerning both their geographical variation and their aggregated values.
Abstract
In many applications, estimates are required for small sub-populations with so few (or no) sample plots that direct estimators that do not utilize auxiliary variables (e.g. remotely sensed data) are not applicable or result in low precision. This problem is overcome in small area estimation (SAE) by linking the variable of interest to auxiliary variables using a model. Two types of models can be distinguished based on the scale on which they operate: i) Unit-level models are applied in the well-known area-based approach (ABA) and are commonly used in forest inventories supported by fine-resolution 3D remote sensing data such as airborne laser scanning (ALS) or digital aerial photogrammetry (AP); ii) Area-level models, where the response is a direct estimate based on a sample within the domain and the explanatory variables are aggregated auxiliary variables, are less frequently applied. Estimators associated with these two model types can make use of sample plots within domains if available and reduce to so-called synthetic estimators in domains where no sample plots are available. We used both model types and their associated model-based estimators in the same study area with AP data as auxiliary variables. Heteroscedasticity, i.e. for continuous dependent variables typically an increasing dispersion of re- siduals with increasing predictions, is often observed in models linking field- and remotely sensed data. This violates the model assumption that the distribution of the residual errors is constant. Complying with model assumptions is required for model-based methods to result in reliable estimates. Addressing heteroscedasticity in models had considerable impacts on standard errors. When complying with model assumptions, the precision of estimates based on unit-level models was, on average, considerably greater (29%–31% smaller standard errors) than those based on area-level models. Area-level models may nonetheless be attractive because they allow the use of sampling designs that do not easily link to remotely sensed data, such as variable radius plots.
Abstract
Forest management affects the distribution of tree species and the age class of a forest, shaping its overall structure and functioning and in turn the surface–atmosphere exchanges of mass, energy, and momentum. In order to attribute climate effects to anthropogenic activities like forest management, good accounts of forest structure are necessary. Here, using Fennoscandia as a case study, we make use of Fennoscandic National Forest Inventory (NFI) data to systematically classify forest cover into groups of similar aboveground forest structure. An enhanced forest classification scheme and related lookup table (LUT) of key forest structural attributes (i.e., maximum growing season leaf area index (LAImax), basal-area-weighted mean tree height, tree crown length, and total stem volume) was developed, and the classification was applied for multisource NFI (MSNFI) maps from Norway, Sweden, and Finland. To provide a complete surface representation, our product was integrated with the European Space Agency Climate Change Initiative Land Cover (ESA CCI LC) map of present day land cover (v.2.0.7). Comparison of the ESA LC and our enhanced LC products (https://doi.org/10.21350/7zZEy5w3) showed that forest extent notably (κ = 0.55, accuracy 0.64) differed between the two products. To demonstrate the potential of our enhanced LC product to improve the description of the maximum growing season LAI (LAImax) of managed forests in Fennoscandia, we compared our LAImax map with reference LAImax maps created using the ESA LC product (and related cross-walking table) and PFT-dependent LAImax values used in three leading land models. Comparison of the LAImax maps showed that our product provides a spatially more realistic description of LAImax in managed Fennoscandian forests compared to reference maps. This study presents an approach to account for the transient nature of forest structural attributes due to human intervention in different land models.
Authors
Ryan Bright Stephanie Eisner Marianne Tronstad Lund Titta Majasalmi Gunnar Myhre Rasmus AstrupAbstract
Predicting the surface albedo of a forest of a given species composition or plant functional type is complicated by the wide range of structural attributes it may display. Accurate characterizations of forest structure are therefore essential to reducing the uncertainty of albedo predictions in forests, particularly in the presence of snow. At present, forest albedo parameterizations remain a nonnegligible source of uncertainty in climate models, and the magnitude attributable to insufficient characterization of forest structure remains unclear. Here we employ a forest classification scheme based on the assimilation of Fennoscandic (i.e., Norway, Sweden, and Finland) national forest inventory data to quantify the magnitude of the albedo prediction error attributable to poor characterizations of forest structure. For a spatial domain spanning ~611,000 km2 of boreal forest, we find a mean absolute wintertime (December–March) albedo prediction error of 0.02, corresponding to a mean absolute radiative forcing ~0.4 W/m2. Further, we evaluate the implication of excluding albedo trajectories linked to structural transitions in forests during transient simulations of anthropogenic land use/land cover change. We find that, for an intensively managed forestry region in southeastern Norway, neglecting structural transitions over the next quarter century results in a foregone (undetected) radiatively equivalent impact of ~178 Mt‐CO2‐eq. year−1 on average during this period—a magnitude that is roughly comparable to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of a country such as The Netherlands. Our results affirm the importance of improving the characterization of forest structure when simulating surface albedo and associated climate effects.
Authors
Ryan Bright Stephanie Eisner Titta Majasalmi Marianne Tronstad Lund Gunnar Myhre Rasmus AstrupAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered