Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon ... - FAO

Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon markets
2. The variety of land use and management strategies in the
project area; determined by stratification.
5.2.1 Boundary demarcation and mapping
In order to ensure correct monitoring and verification, the boundaries
of the project area must be clearly determined. It is very easy to
make mistakes when translating information from the ground onto
a map. The implications of these mistakes can be serious and longlasting.
Discrepancies between boundaries on the ground and on the
map make it very difficult to ensure comparability between successive
forest inventories, and therefore
to accurately calculate changes in
biomass and carbon stocks. They
can also create tensions between
land owners and exacerbate
conflicts over land rights.
Figure 12: Handheld GPS and
CyberTracker used by Kalahari
Bushmen
A handheld Global Positioning
System (GPS) 30 can be used to
record boundaries and the exact
positions of permanent landmarks
such as mountain ridges and
rivers. Data collected through a
GPS can be stored until it is ready
to be transferred reliably to a
computerized mapping software
such as CyberTracker (http://
cybertracker.org/).
30 Detailed instructions on how to use a GPS can be found within Forest Carbon Stock
Measurement Guidelines for measuring carbon stocks in community-managed forests,
Asia Network for Sustainable Agriculture and Bioresources (ANSAB), July 2010.
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