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Lowering Emissions in Asia’s Forests (LEAF) Program
Standard Operating Procedures
for Terrestrial Carbon Measurement
This manual provides standardized field measurements, based on proven field methods, for quantifying carbon
emissions and removals from changes in the use and management of lands. These procedures are a key
component of a quality assurance and quality control plan needed to provide confidence in results of
climate mitigation activities.
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
USAID, along with the U.S. Department of State, spends approximately $90 million annually to reduce
deforestation, increase sequestration, and enhance sustainable forest management. Some examples of
USAID programs include:
- Spending $30 million annually for conservation in the Amazon, including the Initiative for Conservation
in the Andean Amazon and over $100 million since 2002 to targeted conservation programs as part of the
Congo Basin Forest Partnership.
- Working with the Center for International Forestry (CIFOR) to create a suite of training modules on
topics related to forests and climate change, including modules on carbon accounting, forest management,
trading carbon from forests, and international policy.
- Assessing forest conservation and natural resources management programs – in countries such as
Indonesia, Liberia and Bolivia – to see how they can be redesigned, to better incorporate forest
climate practices and policies.
- Further information:
U.S. Forest Services (USFS)
USFS has developed research-based adaptation strategies, carbon sequestration models and a body of
collaborative resource management practices applied in more than fifty countries around the world.
Some of the relevant areas where the USFS is working:
- Reducing deforestation and restoring degraded lands;
- Improving the management and conservation of forests and grasslands;
- Fostering the use of sustainably produced wood for energy, and as a substitute for other more
energy-intensive materials; and
- Research, decision support tools and innovative policies for the future.
In the past year, the USFS has continued to develop robust partnerships around the world to address the
threat of climate change. USFS scientists are cooperating with the Center for International Forestry
Research (CIFOR) to quantify the contribution of mangrove forests to carbon sequestration and
emissions. In collaboration with the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) and
the UN Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO), the USFS helped sponsor a large conference in Sweden
focusing on the challenge of adapting forests ecosystems and dependent communities to climate change.
Finally, the USFS is providing technical support to World Bank FCPF recipient countries such as Liberia,
Vietnam and Mexico and other bilateral partners to improve inventory and forest management systems in order
to advance global efforts at reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.
USFS website on climate change and
forests
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
EPA is helping developing countries build national inventory management systems and offers two sets of
tools, consistent with UNFCCC reporting guidelines and available through the web-link below.
- National System Templates that can accommodate varying levels of national capacity and documents and
institutionalize the inventory management process.
- Targeted data collection strategies and software tools to assist developing countries in moving to
higher Tier IPCC methods.
In particular, the U.S. EPA—along with USAID and the University of Colorado—is working with
forest inventory teams in developing countries to enhance technical capacity and develop sustainable
inventory management systems. This work has included development of a software tool that provides support
for estimating the majority of emissions and removals from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry and
Agriculture. Thus far, the program has assisted 7 Central American countries and is currently working with
6 Southeast Asian countries on their national greenhouse gas inventories for land use, land use change and
forestry, and agriculture.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
USGS has a record of partnerships with developing countries studying land use, resource management, and
climate related issues. The international science team at the USGS' Earth Resources Observation and
Science Center (EROS) has cooperative projects with developing countries, using satellite based data to
monitor the changes to land cover features. Additionally, the North American Node of UNEP GRID, located at
the USGS EROS Center, is in the forefront of applying information technology tools such as remote sensing,
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and web mapping to address the relationships between the environment
and human populations. Utilizing the expert knowledge of staff and visiting scientists, the information
created with these tools provide policy-makers a scientific basis for making decisions.
USGS is also releasing satellite data at no cost. By the end of 2008 the entire archive of data
collected from the Landsat series, as far back as 1972 and current daily new acquisitions, will be
available over the Internet. This release will make land observation data available to a global
science community for monitoring land surface changes over a multi-decade period.
Download Landsat scenes:
- Using USGS Global Visualization Viewer
- Using Earth Explorer
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA’s Land-cover and Land-Use Change (LCLUC) program within its Earth Science Enterprise seeks to
further the scientific understanding of the consequences of land-cover and land-use change for continued
provision of ecological goods and services, the carbon and water cycles and the management of natural
resources. It uses NASA’s remote sensing technology to monitor global land cover change and
improve understanding of human interaction with the environment, and thus provide a scientific foundation
for sustainability, vulnerability and resilience of land systems and their use.
NASA LCLUC is also involved in a joint initiative with the US Geological Survey (USGS), called the
“Global Land Survey” (GLS). Moderate resolution (c. 30m) data are useful for monitoring
forest change, but the cost of using such data has been prohibitively high for some resources managers and
scientists working in tropical forest countries. GLS will make freely available a global time-series
of moderate resolution satellite data, preprocessed to be directly comparable between dates
(orthorectified) for studying forest and land cover change. Currently NASA and USGS are generating a
data set for c. 2005, which will complement previous global data sets for 1980, 1990, and 2000. The
plan for the 2010 data set is to develop this into an international initiative in the framework of the
Group on Earth Observations (GEO), by including data from various international satellites of similar
resolution. Partnerships are currently being sought for this international collaboration.
NASA LCLUC also supports several large regional science campaigns and programs, including the Large Scale
Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia, the Central African Regional Program for the Environment, the
Northern Eurasian Earth Science Partnership Initiative, and the Monsoon Asia Integrated Regional
Study. LCLUC is also a contributor to the international Global Observation of Forest and Land Cover
Dynamics (GOFC-GOLD) program, a project of the Global Terrestrial Observing System (GTOS).
NASA's LCLUC program
U.S. Department of The Treasury
The Tropical Forest Conservation Act allows eligible developing countries to relieve official debt owed to
the U.S. Government while generating funds to support tropical forest conservation programs. The U.S.
Department of the Treasury negotiates and oversees these agreements together with the US Department of
State and the US Agency for International Development. To date the US has concluded 14
debt-for-nature agreements with 12 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, generating $188 million
over 10-25 years to help conserve more than 20 million hectares of tropical forests.
U.S. Department of State
(a) The U.S. State Department promotes international dialogue, cooperation and policy development to
strengthen forest law enforcement and governance. The State Department is a lead agency—working
with USAID, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Trade Representative—for the United States
Initiative Against Illegal Logging, which helps countries combat illegal logging and the export of
illegally harvested timber and timber products. The initiative focuses on the Congo and Amazon
Basins, and South and Southeast Asia, identifying and reducing threats from illegal logging by promoting
transparent markets and strengthening legal regimes, enforcement of forest laws, community-based actions,
and technology transfer.
(b) The State Department is also supporting the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility, as a
means to build “readiness” for countries who want to reduce their emissions from deforestation
and forest degradation (REDD). The Facility will also test methodologies to provide “positive
incentives” for REDD.
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USAID's
biodiversity conservation and forestry programs, FY 2007