Accounting for deep soil carbon in tropical forest conservation payments.

ABSTRACT: Secondary tropical forests are at the forefront of deforestation pressures. They store large amounts of carbon, which, if compensated for to avoid net emissions associated with conversion to non-forest uses, may help advance tropical forest conservation. We measured above- and below-ground carbon stocks down to 1 m soil depth across a secondary forest and in oil palm plantations in Malaysia. We calculated net carbon losses when converting secondary forests to oil palm plantations and estimated payments to avoid net emissions arising from land conversion to a 22-year oil palm rotation, based on land opportunity costs per hectare. We explored how estimates would vary between forests by also extracting carbon stock data for primary forest from the literature. When tree and soil carbon was acc

SUBMITTER: Sundqvist MK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11263576 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature