U.S. Unveils Initiative to Monitor and Manage Forest Carbon Dynamics

OSTP’s Associate Director for Environment Shere Abbott today announced details of an innovative new U.S.-sponsored program called SilvaCarbon, designed to strengthen global capacity to understand, monitor, and manage forest and terrestrial carbondynamics—an essential element in the effort to combat climate change.

Abbott made the announcement in Beijing, where she is leading the U.S. delegation and serving as co-chair for the Seventh Plenary meeting of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a voluntary partnership of governments and international organizations committed to implementing a coordinated response to global environmental stresses.

SilvaCarbon, named after the Latin word for forest, will bring together a community of U.S. scientists and technical experts from government, academia, non-governmental organizations, and industry into a network that will support efforts to improve access to Earth observation data about forests.  It is a key element in the Administration’s comprehensive strategy for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries.

“The science of how forests store carbon, both above ground and in the soil, is of profound importance and requires further monitoring and investigation,” Abbott said. “We want to cooperate more closely with our partners in GEO in this area, to protect and make most effective use of our forests, to avoid harmful deforestation and land-degradation, and to better understand how forests store and release carbon and other greenhouse gases.”

For more information about SilvaCarbon, see OSTP’s press release.

[Ed. Note: The title of this blog has been changed.]