Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations- FAO
Payments for Environmental Services (PES) from Agricultural Landscapes
In climate change mitigation
Carbon sequestration in biomass
Above-ground carbon sequestration is achieved by increasing the amount of biomass above ground. Many land-use changes can generate above-ground carbon sequestration, including adoption of agroforestry, rehabilitation of degraded forests, and establishment of forest plantation and silvo-pastoral systems. How much carbon is sequestered depends on the species chosen and how long they are left to grow, soil type, regional climate, topography, and management practice.
Carbon is sequestered when moving from systems with lower to higher-time averaged stocks. Expanding forest area generates the highest rate of carbon sequestration that can be generated per hectare per year, while annual crops and pastures store the minimum amount of carbon above soils. Logged forests, agro-forests, tree crops, timber plantations and secondary forest fallows are in between. Any intervention that encourages (prevents) conversion from a lower (higher) to a higher (lower) carbon-storing land use will contribute to net carbon storage.
For example:
- in Indonesia, a change from managed and logged forests to undisturbed forest yielded a net gain of 213 tonnes of carbon per hectare over the life of the forest(3);
- in Brazil, changing from short fallow to improved fallow increased carbon sequestered per hectare by 4.6 tonnes over eight years(4);
- in dry forests in central India, through protection and assisted regeneration, per hectare rates of carbon sequestration increased from 27.3 to 55.2 tonnes within ten years in secondary forests, and from 18.8 to 88.7 tonnes in old growth forests after fifty years(5).
(3)Palm, C.A., van Noordwijk, M., Woomer, P.L., Arevalo, L., Castilla, C., Cordeiro, D.G., Hairiah, K., Kotto-Same, J., Moukam, A., Parton, W.J., Riese, A., Rodrigues, V. & Sitompul, S.M. 2005. Carbon losses and sequestration following land use change in the humid tropics. In S.A.V. C.A. Palm, P.A. Sanchez & P.J. Ericksen,, ed. Slash and burn: The search for alternatives, pp. 41-63. New York, Columbia University Press.
(4)Fearnside, P.M. & Guimarães, W.M. 1996. Carbon uptake by secondary forests in brazilian amazonia. Forest Ecology and Management, 80(1): 35-46.
(5)Poffenberger, M., Ravindranath, N.H., Pandey, D.N., Murthy, I.K., Bist, R. & Jain, D. 2001. Communities and climate change: The clean development mechanism and village based forest restoration in central india: A case study from harda, madhya pradesh, india. Santa Barbara, Community Forestry International and Indian Institute of Forest Management.
