Modeling Deforestation in the Bolivian Lowlands Species and Carbon Impacts - Carbon Impact

Carbon Impact

Projecting future land cover scenarios is critical also for assessing the impact on carbon mass. The traditional method has been to use a uniform carbon figure across a region (Figure 8). In our case, we have a uniform carbon figure for all forested areas per hectare and we can simply calculate the loss of carbon mass due to projected deforestation. However, using a proxy of forest land cover, we can refine this process by redistributing the gross carbon mass associated with all forested areas based on the forest’s NDVI (Figure 9) so that the intensity of the NDVI will be our spatial proxy, i.e., the higher the NDVI, the more carbon. Using the projected land cover map to 2015, we identified only the deforested areas and redistributed the gross carbon mass using the NDVI (Figure 10). Assuming business as usual, the table shows the potential additional loss of carbon mass using a non-uniform carbon mass surface (Figure 11). Using modeling tools such as GIS, we can present various scenarios with differing potential impacts for designing carbon offset projects while simultaneously managing biodiversity.