Benchmark Map of Forest Carbon Stocks in Tropical Regions Across Three Continents

S.S. Saatchi, N.L. Harris, S. Brown, M. Lefsky, E. Mitchard, W. Salas, B. Zutta, W. Buermann, S. Lewis, S. Hagen, S. Petrova, L. White, M. Silman, A. Morel. 2011. Benchmark Map of Forest Carbon Stocks in Tropical Regions Across Three Continents. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. Vol.108 no. 24 pp. 9899-9904

Developing countries are required to produce robust estimates of forest carbon stocks for successful implementation of climate change mitigation policies related to reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Here we present a “benchmark” map of biomass carbon stocks over 2.5 billion ha of forests on three continents, encompassing all tropical forests, for the early 2000s, which will be invaluable for REDD assessments at both project and national scales.