Project Funding: 2017 - 2020

NRA: 2016 NASA: Carbon Monitoring System   

Funded by NASA

Abstract:
African urban population is rapidly growing. While only 30% of the African population lived in urban centers in 2000, this figure will reach 60% by year 2050. Close to eighty percent of African urban households use charcoal as main source of cooking fuel. Charcoal is expected to remain the main source of energy in the coming future and its overall consumption will rise by 2040. Charcoal production is already the main driver of forest degradation in sub Saharan Africa. The Miombo region of southern Africa includes the largest tropical woodlands ecosystems in Africa. These ecosystems are a source of large uncertainties in the global carbon balance. The urban demand for energy poses an increasing pressure on these woodlands. Yet, forest degradation driven by charcoal production is still insufficiently understood and poorly quantified. This knowledge gap and the growing importance of this process stresses the need of developing specific monitoring and quantifying strategies as a first step to reduce carbon emissions uncertainties in the region. The overarching goal of this research proposal is developing remote sensing-based and modeling tools to characterize, quantify, understand and predict forest degradation in tropical woodlands of the Miombo region of southern Africa. In a first objective, we will prototype a remote sensing-based approach to map, monitor and quantify forest degradation from charcoal production combining multitemporal analysis of very high-resolution remote sensing images and field measurements. A second objective will develop a modeling framework to generate spatially explicit estimates of current forest degradation area and carbon emissions at national level and predict the evolution of carbon stocks under future scenarios. Finally, we will evaluate the potential and limitations of upcoming NASA GEDI mission to detect changes in forest structure associated to forest degradation in tropical woodlands of southern Africa. Ultimately, the methods and products developed under this project will provide the knowledge base at relevant spatial and temporal scales for understanding a poorly understood forest degradation process of high significance at regional level. This proposal will contribute to advance remote sensing-based approaches to characterize, monitor and quantify forest degradation in tropical woodlands. This knowledge will support the development of more precise MRV REDD+ systems in the countries of the Miombo region. The findings of the project could potentially be incorporated in the national REDD+ strategies in Africa, becoming a key tool for targeted policy interventions within the context of REDD+. The methods developed in this project will be valuable for US and international institutions involved in the independent monitoring of emission inventories in support of international climate agreements. The proposed effort will also contribute to predict the evolution of carbon sources and sinks in a large ecosystem of global importance and source of large uncertainties in the carbon balance. Lastly, this research proposal will also produce information for the calibration and validation of future GEDI data for degradation studies and inform future space-borne LiDAR missions.

Publications:

Sedano, F., Lisboa, S. N., Duncanson, L., Ribeiro, N., Sitoe, A., Sahajpal, R., Hurtt, G., Tucker, C. J. 2020. Monitoring forest degradation from charcoal production with historical Landsat imagery. A case study in southern Mozambique. Environmental Research Letters. 15(1), 015001. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab3186

Sedano, F., Lisboa, S. N., Sahajpal, R., Duncanson, L., Ribeiro, N., Sitoe, A., Hurtt, G., Tucker, C. J. 2021. The connection between forest degradation and urban energy demand in sub-Saharan Africa: a characterization based on high-resolution remote sensing data. Environmental Research Letters. 16(6), 064020. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/abfc05

Sedano, F., Lisboa, S., Duncanson, L., Ribeiro, N., Sitoe, A., Sahajpal, R., Hurtt, G., Tucker, C. 2020. Monitoring intra and inter annual dynamics of forest degradation from charcoal production in Southern Africa with Sentinel - 2 imagery. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation. 92, 102184. DOI: 10.1016/j.jag.2020.102184

More details may be found in the following project profile(s):

• NASA Terrestrial Ecology (TE) Project Profile
• NASA Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) Project Profile