Regional analysis to assess trends and status of regional GHG budgets in South America

Abstract:

A robust evaluation of the natural land carbon sink and processes of land-use change and fire impacts is key to quantify historical and present-day GHG budgets across South America. In particular, Brazil is associated with large emissions through deforestation and forest degradation, as well as an important sink through vast areas of natural forest. High productivity rates and long carbon residence times in forests are on the one hand stimulated by vegetation growth response to increasing atmospheric [CO2], but on the other hand impacted by occurrence of drought induced forest loss. In this presentation, we provide an update to quantify historical and present-day carbon budgets across South America with a focus on Brazil´s individual C flux terms: i) the status of the natural land sink (and possible recent trends and how these relate to environmental change drivers) is assessed through process based land surface models and top-down atmospheric inversions; ii) land use change emissions are quantified from locally updated satellite remote-sensing products, combining estimates of land cover and land use change and inventories that can be used to improve global datasets; and iii) the role of fires is investigated through its direct effects on emissions and its impacts on ecosystem dynamics and degradation.