Managing landscapes for carbon
Research in my laboratory is also focusing on the multiple links existing between land use and carbon cycling. Changes in land use are believed to account for about 30% of the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past century.
This contribution was initially caused by the conversion of boreal and temperate forests to agricultural and pasture, but over the past 80 years, tropical deforestation has dominated. In the discussions around the issue of greenhouse gas management, the opportunities for establishing significant C sinks in the tropics through land use change have been touted, the feasibility, mechanics and magnitude of these sinks in the context of landscapes where people need to use the land for their living need to be explored.
Since 1996, I have been very engaged with an Embera community of Eastern Panama, Ipeti-Embera to study how traditional livelihoods could be adapted to increase carbon stocks in human landscapes. Ipeti-Embera is a collective land of ~3,500 ha, half of which is covered by forest. The land is under colective management and individual families are given a right of use. The collective lands are surraounded in a matrix of pasture where Panamanian famers, often migrating from Western Panama, are engaged in cattle ranching. Ipeti-Emebera provides a most interesting model of a managementof resources in a finite context since neither expansion nor migration are not options for the villagers.
Related Publications:
- Potvin, C., Tschakert, P, Lebel, F, Kirby, K, Barrios, H, Bocariza J, Caisamo, J, Caisama, L, Cansari, C, Casamá, J, Casamá, M, Chamorra, L, Dumasa, N, Goldenberg, S, Guainora, V, Hayes, P, Moore, T1 and Ruíz, J. 2007. A participatory approach to the establishment of a baseline scenario for a reforestation CDM project. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change 12(8): 1341-1362. [download on-line article]
- Kirby, KR and Potvin, C. 2007. Species-level management in carbon sink projects: a case study from an Embera territory in eastern Panama. Forest Ecology and Management 246:208-221.
[appendix to article] - Tschakert, P., Coomes O., and Potvin C. 2007. Indigenous livelihoods, slash-and-burn-agriculture and carbon stocks in Eastern Panama. Ecological Economics 60: 807-820
- Kraenzel, M.B., T. Moore, A. Castillo and C. Potvin. 2003. Carbon storage of harvest-age teak (Tectona grandis) plantations, Panama. Forest Ecology and Management. 173:213-225
- Elias, M. and C. Potvin 2003. Assessing intra- and inter-specific variation in trunk carbon concentration for 32 neotropical tree species. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 33: 1039-1045.
Last update: July 5, 2011
