Growth and survival of potential tree species for carbon-offset in degraded areas from southeast Brazil
Introduction
The Paris Global Climate Agreement (PGCA), launched in December 2015, is has the central goal of limiting the global temperature increase between 1.5 and 2.0 °C by 2100, compared to the temperature of the pre-industrial periods (Arantegui and Jäger-Waldau, 2018, Rogelj et al., 2016, Viñuales et al., 2017). The PGCA was ratified in December 2016 and Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) were created so that participating nations to achieve their goals by formalizing commitments to GHG (Klein et al., 2017, United Nations, 2016, United Nations, 2017).
Brazil, which owns a large forest extension, high agricultural production and hosts ecosystems of global relevance, plays a fundamental role in discussing the NDCs related to Land-Use Change and Forestry. According to the PGCA, Brazil aims to restore 12 million hectares with forests for multiple uses up to 2030. This goal is convergent with other objectives of the country such as the environmental regularization agenda of the Forest Code and achieving the Brazilian targets for biodiversity (Brasil, 2012, Comissão Nacional da Biodiversidade, 2013, Brasil, 2015). Alongside these voluntary goals of the country, other initiatives referred to as “carbon-offset plantations”, which are gaining prominence in the climate change scenario allied to the restoration of degraded areas, are being developed. Carbon-offset plantations are a way used by corporate and public organizations to show concern for the environment, as well as being a marketing mechanism to attract discerning customers and investors (Hassan, 2009). For example, the municipality of São Paulo adopted, through ordinance 06/2007, the mandatory to carbon-offset in 32 municipal parks.
Voluntary projects of biodiversity plantations aiming to remove carbon from the atmosphere had their origin in England and other European countries in the 1980s. In Brazil, the first projects related to this topic started in 2005 (Hassan, 2009, Anderson et al., 2017). The ability of trees to fix carbon and generate other co-benefits makes these projects interesting for forest restoration and climate change mitigation (Ferez et al., 2015). An important experience in this context is the California carbon offset project, which promoted carbon stocks as well as ecological services that positively impacted in the local biodiversity (Anderson et al., 2017).
Brazil must overcome great challenges to achieve the NDC goals related to the restoration and implementation of reliable carbon-offset projects. Among the main challenges can be listed: lack dissemination of the technical knowledge of forest restoration; little attention given to the monitoring and evolution of carbon-offset plantations, as well as the lack of information on the silvicultural behavior of regional native species, definition of baselines for removals from the restoration (tons of CO2 ha−1 year−1), indication of coefficients that reduce the risk of non-permanence of carbon stocks by removals in plantations, regulation and transparency and incipient conversion factors (tree/CO2e) (Hassan, 2009, Ministério do Meio Ambiente., 2017). Understanding the behavior of tree species in different situations is fundamental to consolidate the most robust carbon offset programs. The WebAmbiente tool is an initiative to subsidize the choice of tree species for forest restoration programs; however, it still lacks of specific carbon storage data by species (WebAmbiente, 2019). The lack of species-level carbon survival and removal indicators for carbon offset programs located within a given region reinforces the importance of conducting research to develop successful carbon offset projects in Brazil, in addition to filling this gap in the technical knowledge (Alves et al., 2010, Vieira et al., 2011, Joly et al., 2014).
Despite evidence that forest restoration in degraded areas is an important tool for increasing carbon stock improving ecosystem benefits (Miranda et al., 2011, Wheeler et al., 2016), studies focused on determining survival and carbon stock indicators of Zona da Mata (Atlantic Forest) tree are scarce. Therefore, this study aims to contribute with indicators related to these performances, as well as with practical data of forest species to improve the planning of restoration and carbon offset projects. Therefore, the objective was to evaluate the growth and survival, at 40 months, of tree species in a carbon-offset plantation in a degraded area from the southeastern Brazil.
Section snippets
Characterization of the study area
The study area (708 m above sea level) is located in the Espaço Aberto de Evento da Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV), Viçosa, MG, Brazil (20° 45′ 37.62″ S and 42° 52′ 29.59″ W) (Fig. 1). The regional vegetation is classified as Semidecidual Seasonal Forest Montana (Atlantic Forest) (Martins & Cavararo, 2012), and climate is classified as Cwa (Köppen) with cold and dry winters and hot and rainy summers. The water surplus from November to March of the region is ~366 mm with hydric deficit in
Results
The SP of trees was 47.5%. The average carbon stock of the plantation was 2.6 ± 6.2 Kg C individual−1 and the AAIC was 0.78 Kg C individual−1 year−1, corresponding to 2.9 Kg CO2 individual−1 year−1 (Table 2). The carbon stock was higher for pioneer species (3.2 kg individual−1) than in non-pioneer ones (0.60 kg C individual−1) (Fig. 4).
Peltophorum dubium, Albizia hassleri and Anadenanthera macrocarpa presented the highest SP values (84.0, 80.0 and 70.0%, respectively), and were among the
Discussion
The World Resources Institute of Brazil (WRI Brazil) lists the main native forest species to be considered for restoration projects of degraded areas in different biomes of the country at 40 months (Rolim et al., 2019). This study allowed to verify the survival and growth rates of 15 tree species from Zona da Mata Mineira. In addition, a species-level performance analysis was performed taking into account their ecological and carbon storage relevance. These results can assist decision makers in
Conclusion
The tree survival of the mixed carbon-offset plantation was low, requiring of replanting or planting a large number of seedlings to increase the probability of success of the project. The average annual carbon removal was less than the established in most of carbon-offset projects. Pioneer species stored more carbon than non-pioneer species in early stages of growth, but the use of the two functional groups is important to get a continuous storage of carbon for long periods.
The pioneer species
Funding
Coordenação de aperfeiçoamento de Nível Superir (CAPES) and Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq).
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Vicente Toledo Machado de Morais Junior: Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Laércio Antônio Gonçalves Jacovine: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision. Eliana Boaventura Bernardes Moura Alves: Supervision, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. Carlos Moreira Miquelino Eleto Torres:
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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