Sub-continental-scale carbon stocks of individual trees in African drylands

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dc.contributor.authorTucker, Compton
dc.contributor.authorBrandt, Martin
dc.contributor.authorHiernaux, Pierre
dc.contributor.authorKariyaa, Ankit
dc.contributor.authorRasmussen, Kjeld
dc.contributor.authorSmall, Jennifer
dc.contributor.authorIgel, Christian
dc.contributor.authorReiner, Florian
dc.contributor.authorMelocik, Katherine
dc.contributor.authorMeyer, Jesse
dc.contributor.authorSinno, Scott
dc.contributor.authorRomero, Eric
dc.contributor.authorGlennie, Erin
dc.contributor.authorFitts, Yasmin
dc.contributor.authorMorin, August
dc.contributor.authorPinzon, Jorge
dc.contributor.authorMcClain, Devin
dc.contributor.authorMorin, Paul
dc.contributor.authorPorter, Claire
dc.contributor.authorLoeffler, Shane
dc.contributor.authorKergoat, Laurent
dc.contributor.authorIssoufou, Bil-Assaour
dc.contributor.authorSavadogo, Patrice
dc.contributor.authorWigneron, Jean-Pierre
dc.contributor.authorPoulter, Benjamin
dc.contributor.authorCliais, Phillippe
dc.contributor.authorKaufmann, Robert
dc.contributor.authorMyneni, Ranga
dc.contributor.authorSaatchi, Sassan
dc.contributor.authorFensholt, Rasmus
dc.date.accessioned2023-03-31T03:33:15Z
dc.date.available2023-03-31T03:33:15Z
dc.date.issued2023-03-01
dc.description© The Author(s) 2023. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Version of Scholarly Record of this Article is published in Nature, 2023, available online at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05653-6 . Keywords: carbon stocks; above-ground carbon; mapping; Africa; sub-Saharan Africa; dryland trees; ecological protection; carbon accounting; climate mitigation; ecosystem restoration.
dc.description.abstractThe distribution of dryland trees and their density, cover, size, mass and carbon content are not well known at sub-continental to continental scales. This information is important for ecological protection, carbon accounting, climate mitigation and restoration efforts of dryland ecosystems. We assessed more than 9.9 billion trees derived from more than 300,000 satellite images, covering semi-arid sub-Saharan Africa north of the Equator. We attributed wood, foliage and root carbon to every tree in the 0–1,000 mm year−1 rainfall zone by coupling field data, machine learning, satellite data and high-performance computing. Average carbon stocks of individual trees ranged from 0.54 Mg C ha−1 and 63 kg C tree−1 in the arid zone to 3.7 Mg C ha−1 and 98 kg tree−1 in the sub-humid zone. Overall, we estimated the total carbon for our study area to be 0.84 (±19.8%) Pg C. Comparisons with 14 previous TRENDY numerical simulation studies for our area found that the density and carbon stocks of scattered trees have been underestimated by three models and overestimated by 11 models, respectively. This benchmarking can help understand the carbon cycle and address concerns about land degradation. We make available a linked database of wood mass, foliage mass, root mass and carbon stock of each tree for scientists, policymakers, dryland-restoration practitioners and farmers, who can use it to estimate farmland tree carbon stocks from tablets or laptops.
dc.description.sponsorshipAcknowledgements We thank Maxar, Inc. for providing commercial satellite data through the NextView Imagery End User License Agreement. M.B. and F.R. were supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 947757 TOFDRY) and a DFF Sapere Aude grant (no. 9064–00049B). A.K., R.F. and C.I. acknowledge support by the Villum Foundation through the project Deep Learning and Remote Sensing for Unlocking Global Ecosystem Resource Dynamics (DeReEco, grant no. 34306). C.I. acknowledges support by the Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence, DNRF grant number P1. NASA supported this work through the Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition (CDSA) Program. We thank NASA’s K. Murphy and A. Hall for funding this work; T. Lee and D. Duffy of NASA for supporting our use of Maxar data; B. Kramer, B. Bode and the entire Blue Waters staff who enabled our extensive use of high performance computing to map 9,947,310,221 trees and convert them into wood, foliage and root carbon.
dc.identifier.citationTucker, C., Brandt, M., Hiernaux, P. et al. Sub-continental-scale carbon stocks of individual trees in African drylands. Nature 615, 80–86 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05653-6
dc.identifier.otherhttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05653-6
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14096/317
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherSpringer Nature
dc.titleSub-continental-scale carbon stocks of individual trees in African drylands
dc.typeArticle

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