Practical training in CarboScen – a tool to quantify ecosystem carbon in land use scenarios

28 Oct 2017, Melia Hotel

Practical training in CarboScen – a tool to quantify ecosystem carbon in land use scenarios

Lecturer: Dr. Markku Larjavaara – University of Helsinki, Finland. Developers of the CarboScen tool and software.

Participants: Scientists, lecturers/students, REDD+ developers, land-use planners, public sector professionals or NGOs, along with others who want to learn about carbon in ecosystems and how to estimate it in an ever-changing landscape. Participants should ideally have some previous knowledge of forest carbon dynamics, REDD+, and/or other issues related to land use, land use change and forestry.

Equipment required: Participants must bring their own laptop and download in advance the CarboScen software – available at: http://www.cifor.org/gcs/toolboxes/carboscen/. Check if it works (some computers ask for administrator authorization to run the program).

Topic: Adding or conserving carbon in ecosystems represents a cost-efficient contribution to climate change mitigation. However, calculating carbon in ecosystems can be a challenge in dynamic landscapes. CarboScen software has been developed for these purposes.

In this workshop, the necessary steps are taken to estimate carbon in ecosystems:

Define land use classes,
Building scenarios of future land use change,
Establish balanced carbon densities (e.g. tons per hectare) per land use class,
Capture transition speeds based on local or global information,
Include uncertainty,
Use the CarboScen program to calculate future carbon in ecosystems for simulated land use scenario(s).

Logistics: Meals during the training will be provided. CIFOR may cover travel cost for participation of key stakeholders coming from outside Hanoi. Prior formal request and acceptance from CIFOR is required for this.

Acknowledgements: This research is part of CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+ (www.cifor.org/gcs). The funding partners that have supported this research include the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the International Climate Initiative (IKI) of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) and the CGIAR Research Program on Forests, Trees and Agroforestry (CRP-FTA) with financial support from the CGIAR Fund Donors.

For more information:
http://www.cifor.org/gcs/toolboxes/carboscen/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ecog.02576/abstract
What is CarboScen?

Agenda:

09:00-09:10 Registration of participants
09:10-09:30 Carbon in ecosystems, why are we interested?
09:30-10:00 CarboScen: Theory
10:00-10:30 — Coffee break —
10:30-12:30 CarboScen practice: forming groups, designating landscape, setting parameters for CarboScen, running the scenarios
12:30-13:30 — Lunch —
13:30-14:30 Prepare presentations 3 minutes, presentations
14:30-15:00 — Coffee break —
15:00-16:00 Carbon simulations from a study with expert interviews on possible future carbon scenarios, global study but emphasis on Vietnam
16:00-16:30 Simulations of biodiversity – emphasis on Vietnam
16:30-17:00 Discussion, feed back