Comparative evaluation of South versus North Goseong County in terms of forest carbon offset potential

Abstract

The aim of this study was to present objective evidence for greater carbon offset potential in North Korea compared to South Korea. Goseong County was a single administrative unit before the Korean War, showing similar topography and vegetation. In this regard, South and North Goseong counties were initially similar in terms of carbon offset potentials, giving an ideal situation for an objective comparison of the potential for developing carbon sinks. An empirical study for North and South Goseong counties was conducted to demonstrate how a standard Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) extracted from Landsat data can be used to estimate the total volume of forest cover and to detect changes in forest cover. The counties were divided further into watersheds for the analysis. The watersheds with very high carbon offset potential (top 20 % in terms of NDVI decrease) were mostly observed in North Goseong. Seventy-four percent of the total watersheds in North Goseong were classified into the top 20 % in terms of NDVI decrease for the entire area. This research objectively proves that North Goseong County contains areas with much higher carbon offset potential than does of South Goseong County. It is anticipated that these research results can be used as a valuable reference to support more scientific and objective comparison between South Korea and North Korea in exploring carbon offset sites.