Abstract
This study estimates CO2 sequestration by forests in Japan using Land Remote Sensing Satellite (Landsat) Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) Phased Array L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (PALSAR) remote sensing data for the in-depth retrieval of forest growth stages (tree age). Landsat imagery was used to develop a detailed forest cover map, while the PALSAR data were used to estimate the volume information. The volume was converted to tree age information for each of the three forest types in Japan. An estimation of CO2 sequestration values for each forest type and for each tree age from the forest inventory data was made. The forest cover map results in four classes, and the overall accuracy yields approximately 74%. For the volume estimation, Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) was computed with the ground reference information resulting in 105.58 m3/ha. The final result showed that total CO2 sequestration in Japan based on tree age forest subclasses yields 85.0 Mt∙CO2 (coniferous), 4.76 Mt∙CO2 (evergreen broadleaf) and 21.61 Mt∙CO2 (deciduous broadleaf), which in total is 111.27 Mt∙CO2. Using remote sensing techniques to quantitatively estimate CO2 sequestration in Japanese forests has been shown both to have advantages and to offer further possibilities.
Highlights
Forest resources are essential to life on Earth because forests play a large role in providing organic matter through photosynthesis, which is important for countless species of plants and animals, and in processing atmospheric gasses such as CO2, which is of crucial environmental importance and among the most important issues faced in the 21st century: Global Warming/Climate Change
Prefectural Governments and private companies in Japan highly value forest carbon sequestration research; some Prefectures have not yet been involved in such processes even when they have a great amount of forest cover [5], which may be because they lack the equipment or effective methodology to quantitatively estimate carbon sequestration
If we assume that the methods used by the National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) [8] study are likely to be the most accurate estimation of the natural environment, the remote sensing method applied in this study shows only a 43% overestimation in comparison
Summary
Forest resources are essential to life on Earth because forests play a large role in providing organic matter through photosynthesis, which is important for countless species of plants and animals, and in processing atmospheric gasses such as CO2, which is of crucial environmental importance and among the most important issues faced in the 21st century: Global Warming/Climate Change. Protocol and the Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation mechanisms (REDD, REDD+) provided a new approach to finding solutions, giving the role of forests more importance, especially when focusing on how forests function as a carbon sink. Forest carbon sinks are highly important in the current research context, as 67% of the land in Japan is covered by forests [3]. Prefectural Governments and private companies in Japan highly value forest carbon sequestration research; some Prefectures have not yet been involved in such processes even when they have a great amount of forest cover [5], which may be because they lack the equipment or effective methodology to quantitatively estimate carbon sequestration
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