Status of REDD.pdf - Sokoine University of Agriculture

Proceedings of the first Climate Change Impacts, Mitigation and Adaptation Programme Scientific Conference, 2012determining REL/RL to enable countriesto progressively include more REDD+ asdata becomes available.4.1 National Forest ResourcesMonitoring and Assessment(NAFORMA)Tanzania did not have carried out nationalforest inventory in the past. Therefore thestarting point was to initiate a NationalForest Resources Monitoring andAssessment (NAFORMA).NAFORMA is:– building the capacity on national forestinventories and remote sensing,– determining the current land usecover/forest extent,– determining the current forest growingstock,– identifying drivers of deforestation andforest degradation, and– designing a forest monitoring systemusing permanent sample plots (PSPs).NAFORMA will therefore produce mostof the essential inputs to the REL/RLestablishment. The first phase ofNAFORMA will be completed inDecember 2012, the construction of theREL/RE will therefore start as the databecomes available.4.2 Estimation of the historicalnational deforestationFAO Forest Resources AssessmentRemote Sensing Survey (FRA-RSS)approach will be adopted. FRA-RSS is acontinuous process of assessing the globalforest condition over a 5 to 10 yearsinterval. This assessment is done by meansofRemote Sensing Survey (RSS) samplingtiles all over the globe and produces dataat continental level – not national level.There are 79 RSS tiles that fall in theterritory of Tanzania this is however toolittle to measure national forest coverchange with any degree of accuracy. Withassistance from the Joint Research Centre(JRC) of the European Union the FAOFRA-RSS tiles will be relocated over the850 NAFORMA PSPs clusters. The forestcover change will be assessed at twoperiods of 1990-2000 and 2000-2010.The continuous assessment in the PSPslinked up with the continuous FRA-RSSprocess will also ensure continuity of theMRV process in Tanzania. TheNAFORMA PSPs will be re-measured inyear 2 or 3 after NAFORMA field work.The ground data will then be used with thenational RSS system to detect forestchanges and provide a robust and efficientmonitoring process for the REDDimplementation. This work is currentlydone under the support of the UNREDDTanzania programme in collaboration withNAFORMA.4.3 Estimation of forest degradationThe remote sensing community hasproposed several ways to measuredeforestation accurately and reasonablycheap. Measuring forest degradation (lossof biomass within a forest) remotely ismuch more problematic. An alternativeway to measure changes on standingcarbon is carrying out a ground inventorybasing on PSPs.Tanzania like other developing countrieshas very little reliable data on forest stockchanges. The absence of forest data is theoutcome of the fact that continuous foreststock monitoring in PSPs is not adequatelycarried out. While NAFORMA providesfuture solution to this problem, existingPSPs from previous research with remeasurementswithin the present time canbe utilised for the current uses. UNREDDTanzania programme is commissioninginstitutions with PSPs to assessdegradation/carbon sequestration indifferent vegetation types across thecountry.5.0 ExpectationsIt is anticipated that most of the data forthe establishment of national REL/RL for52