Mapping greenhouse gas emissions and removals from the land use, land use change, and forestry sector at the local level

Abstract

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from the Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry sector (LULUCF) are estimated and reported in National Communications to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). By definition, the LULUCF sector is a "greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory sector that covers emissions and removals of greenhouse gases resulting from direct human-induced land use, land-use change and forestry activities". In principle, the annual GHG national inventory should be transparent, consistent, comparable, complete, and accurate. Also, it should be able to systematically account for all changes in land use and forest cover over many years. In this context, it is essential to investigate the development of an automated approach for mapping local GHG emissions/removals from the LULUCF sector for integration at the national level. In view of that, the aim of this work was to develop a semi-automated model for estimating GHG emissions and removals form the LULUCF sector at the local level. The specific objectives were to 1) map changes in land use and forest cover between two consecutive years, and 2) assess GHG emissions and removals from the LULUCF sector. The methodology of work comprised the use of Geographic ObjectBased Image Analysis (GEOBIA) for modelling changes in the LULUCF sector and, subsequently, estimating GHG emissions/removals between two consecutive years. The combined use of Very High Resolution (VHR) SPOT imagery (2.5 m colour) and field data was involved in identifying and mapping land-use changes between 2014 and 2015. Subsequently, GHG emissions and removals were estimated using customized features in GEOBIA and following the 2003 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change "Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry", which adopts a land use category-based approach to estimate emissions/removals from all land categories and all relevant GHGs. An accuracy assessment of the initial classificatio.