What is it about?

We use remote sensing data, field measures, and a suite of allometric equations to measure the carbon stocks of Ecuador's mangrove forests.

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Why is it important?

Ecuador's mangroves may hold more carbon that originally estimated by all but one of the current measures. This is important not only to climate change mitigation but to UN schemes such as REDD+. That is, mangroves within Ecuador could play an important climate change mitigation role far beyond their importance if only ranked by their geographic area.

Perspectives

This publication ties together a methodology for estimating mangrove carbon stocks accounting for tree species, tree cover percent, and tree size. It can be scaled-up globally and still provide information at highly local scales (parks, estuaries, private lands). Within Ecuador it indicates that mangrove carbon stock are higher than would be anticipated when only examining mangrove area.

Stuart E. Hamilton
Salisbury University

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: The Carbon Holdings of Northern Ecuador's Mangrove Forests, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, October 2016, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2016.1226160.
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Contributors

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