Search

During December 2020, a crowdsourcing campaign to understand what has been driving tropical forest loss during the past decade was undertaken. For 2 weeks, 58 participants from several countries reviewed almost 115 K unique locations in the tropics, identifying drivers of forest loss (derived from the Global Forest Watch map) between 2008 and 2019. Previous studies have produced global maps of drivers of forest loss, but the current campaign increased the resolution and the sample size across the tropics to provide a more accurate mapping of crucial factors leading to forest loss. The data were collected using the Geo-Wiki platform ( www.geo-wiki.org ) where the participants were asked to select the predominant and secondary forest loss drivers amongst a list of potential factors indicating evidence of visible human impact such as roads, trails, or buildings. The data described here are openly available and can be employed to produce updated maps of tropical drivers of forest loss, which in turn can be used to support policy makers in their decision-making and inform the public., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Forest biomass is an essential indicator for monitoring the Earth's ecosystems and climate. It is a critical input to greenhouse gas accounting, estimation of carbon losses and forest degradation, assessment of renewable energy potential, and for developing climate change mitigation policies such as REDD+, among others. Wall-to-wall mapping of aboveground biomass (AGB) is now possible with satellite remote sensing (RS). However, RS methods require extant, up-to-date, reliable, representative and comparable in situ data for calibration and validation. Here, we present the Forest Observation System (FOS) initiative, an international cooperation to establish and maintain a global in situ forest biomass database. AGB and canopy height estimates with their associated uncertainties are derived at a 0.25 ha scale from field measurements made in permanent research plots across the world's forests. All plot estimates are geolocated and have a size that allows for direct comparison with many RS measurements. The FOS offers the potential to improve the accuracy of RS-based biomass products while developing new synergies between the RS and ground-based ecosystem research communities.

The most comprehensive dataset of in situ destructive sampling measurements of forest biomass in Eurasia have been compiled from a combination of experiments undertaken by the authors and from scientific publications. Biomass is reported as four components: live trees (stem, bark, branches, foliage, roots); understory (above- and below ground); green forest floor (above- and below ground); and coarse woody debris (snags, logs, dead branches of living trees and dead roots), consisting of 10,351 unique records of sample plots and 9,613 sample trees from ca 1,200 experiments for the period 1930-2014 where there is overlap between these two datasets. The dataset also contains other forest stand parameters such as tree species composition, average age, tree height, growing stock volume, etc., when available. Such a dataset can be used for the development of models of biomass structure, biomass extension factors, change detection in biomass structure, investigations into biodiversity and species distribution and the biodiversity-productivity relationship, as well as the assessment of the carbon pool and its dynamics, among many others.