Author:

Keywords:

vegetation dynamics, climate, REDD+

Abstract:

Attempted international measures to reduce carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) require accounting for both climatic and human impacts on vegetation, and a shift towards a whole-landscape approach. Remote sensing archives allow for an area-covering, spatio-temporally explicit analysis of vegetation dynamics on different scales. This research attempts to quantify and separate the effects of regional and local variability in weather and soil conditions on vegetation, via time series analysis of satellite imagery and weather records, image classification and field surveys. Carbon stocks are estimated from field data and linked to detected land use for up-scaling to a national carbon balance, thereby comparing a sectoral forest approach with a landscape approach.