Characterization of Crop Commodities Replacing Forest lands and Associated Carbon Budgets in Indonesia
Abstract
Indonesia contained a large fraction of the total Southeast Asia forest in 2000 and the largest area of peat soils in the tropics, however there has been significant commodity-driven forest clearing in Indonesia, particularly in Kalimantan and Sumatra. Commodity-driven land use change in Indonesia has the potential to have significant impacts on the greenhouse gas balance from the agriculture, forestry and other land use sector. Future prioritization of investments to create sustainable landscapes requires knowledge of how and where natural forests are being converted to agricultural commodities and the associated greenhouse gas emissions. We used a sample based inventory of crop commodities in previously forested lands in Indonesia to characterize the composition of the main commodities in formerly forested lands. Land cover and use data were collected at each sample using visual photo-interpretation methods in the Collect Earth Online platform (Saah, et al. 2019), including information on the baseline tree canopy cover, the current composition of crop commodities, and agroforestry systems. Impacts from changes in peatlands were assessed using the data available on Global Forest Watch. Carbon stock change factors were used to estimate carbon emissions from replacement of forests by croplands between 2000 and 2015. We estimate 34 million hectares (M ha) of lands that had tree cover in 2000 are now supporting crop commodities; while 111.4 M ha are still supporting natural tree communities. Oil palm was the main crop in our survey that replaced lands previously supporting tree cover, 10 M ha. Other commodities including rice and pulpwood plantations were also widespread. The total carbon storage within the above ground plant biomass of the crop commodities replacing forested land is 940.8 M Mg C. The difference, or loss, in storage compared to the storage value if these lands were still forested is 6,561 M Mg C. This effort supports Southeast Asian countries to better understand the relationships between development and forest conservation. Providing baseline information on the relative contribution of crop commodities to tree cover and carbon dynamics can be used to identify opportunities and monitor policy interventions aimed at reducing impacts.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMGC43K1418S
- Keywords:
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- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1632 Land cover change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1640 Remote sensing;
- GLOBAL CHANGE