While improved management of agricultural landscapes is promoted as a promising natural climate solution, available estimates of the mitigation potential are based on coarse assessments of both agricultural extent and aboveground carbon density. Here we combine 30 meter resolution global maps of aboveground woody carbon, tree cover, and cropland extent, as well as a 1 km resolution map of global pasture land, to estimate the c...

The apparent accumulation of carbon on land necessary to balance the global carbon budget has perplexed scientists since the first carbon budgets were constructed more than 40 years ago. The magnitude of the sink over the decade 2006–2015 averaged 3.1 ± 0.9 PgC/year, but neither the factors causing it nor its location are known. Here, based on results from a recent analysis by Baccini et al. ( ), we estimate that about a third...

Halving carbon emissions from tropical deforestation by 2020 could help bring the international community closer to the agreed goal of NYDF ). We assemble and refine a robust dataset to establish a 2001–2013 benchmark for average annual carbon emissions from gross tropical deforestation at 2.270 Gt CO 2 yr −1 . Brazil did not sign the NYDF , yet from 2001 to 2013, Brazil ranks first for both carbon emissions from gross tropica...

In a recent paper ( M itchard et al . 2014, G lobal E cology and B iogeography , 23 , 935–946) a new map of forest biomass based on a geostatistical model of field data for the A mazon (and surrounding forests) was presented and contrasted with two earlier maps based on remote‐sensing data Saatchi et al . (2011; RS1) and Baccini et al . (2012; RS2). M itchard et al . concluded that both the earlier remote‐sensing based maps we...

Satellite‐derived indices of photosynthetic activity are the primary data source used to study changes in global vegetation productivity over recent decades. Creating coherent, long‐term records of vegetation activity from legacy satellite data sets requires addressing many factors that introduce uncertainties into vegetation index time series. We compared long‐term changes in vegetation productivity at high northern latitudes...