The Effectiveness of Global Protected Areas for Climate Change Mitigation

Thumbnail Image

Files

The_Effectiveness_of_Global_Protected_Areas_for_Cl.pdf (3.73 MB)
a4b93deac5ed7dfcfd3c9739.docx (2.09 MB)

Links to Files

https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-2318743/v1

Permanent Link

http://dx.doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-2318743/v1
 http://hdl.handle.net/11603/26589

Collections

UMBC Geography and Environmental Systems Department
UMBC Student Collection

Author/Creator

Author/Creator ORCID

Date

2022-12-13

Type of Work

journal articles
preprints
Text

Department

Program

Citation of Original Publication

Rights

This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain Mark 1.0

Subjects

Abstract

Forests play a critical role in stabilizing Earth’s climate. Establishing Protected Areas (PAs) represents one approach to forest conservation, but PAs were rarely created to mitigate climate change. The global impact of PAs on the carbon cycle, through avoided emissions and/or enhanced growth, has not previously been quantified due to a lack of accurate global carbon stock maps. Here we used ~412 million lidar samples from NASA’s GEDI mission to estimate a total of 19.7 +/- 1.8 Gt of additional Aboveground Biomass (AGB) associated with PA status. These higher C stocks are primarily attributed to avoided emissions, and are roughly equivalent to annual global fossil fuel emissions. The total measured PA AGB was 125.3 Gt (+/- 0.63), 26% of all mapped terrestrial woody AGB. These results underscore the importance of conservation of high integrity1, high biomass forests for avoiding carbon emissions and preserving future sequestration.