Collaborative Research: Supply Functions and Clean-Development Mechanism Rules for Tropical Forest Carbon Sinks

由于对全球气候变化的担忧，社会正在积极探索利用森林生态系统作为碳汇的可能性。热带森林可能提供其中三分之二以上的机会。保护热带森林可以抵消全球化石燃料的碳排放，并降低京都议定书规定的排放限制的成本。此外，在京都建立的清洁发展机制（CDM）下，经认证的排放额度（CERs）可能会将热带森林汇纳入实现排放目标的努力中。原则上，这可能带来显著的经济效益和封存效益，尽管有关热带碳汇的实际证据很少。为了推进与这一重要课题相关的知识和实践，这个合作研究项目有两个主要目标。首先，研究人员将开发一个综合的、空间明确的模型，预测如果为碳封存提供经济奖励，哥斯达黎加将会产生多少额外的碳封存。这项建模工作将包括土地利用的经济建模和碳储存的生态建模。这两套模型都将基于对碳和氮储量和流量的经验观察，并对土壤、气候和土地利用的变化进行系统采样。这项研究的第二个主要目标将是有助于有效地设计规则，使热带地区的碳封存努力取代更发达国家的减排努力。这条调查路线将涉及对综合模型进行敏感性分析，以便得出最先进的学科和综合模型的简化版本。这项工作将有助于估算哥斯达黎加将产生多少碳封存，以响应碳封存的不同货币奖励。这个项目将增进对哥斯达黎加这个拥有大量热带森林和现成数据来源的代表性国家影响土地利用选择的社会经济和生态因素的相互作用以及土地利用变化对碳封存的影响的了解。除了解决这些基本问题外，该项目还将探索简化模型的潜力，以确定不同的碳封存激励措施对土地利用决策的潜在影响，从而为《京都议定书》减少大气碳的关键方面提供有价值的新见解。

Because of concerns about global climate change, society is actively exploring the possibility of using forest ecosystems as a carbon sink. Tropical forests may offer more than two-thirds of such opportunities. The protection of tropical forests could offset global fossil fuel carbon emissions and reduce the cost of emissions limitations set in Kyoto. In addition, certified emissions credits (CERs) under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) established in Kyoto likely will incorporate tropical forest sinks within efforts to meet emissions targets. In principle, this could result in significant economic and sequestration benefits, although actual evidence on tropical carbon sinks is sparse. To advance knowledge and practice associated with this important topic, this collaborative research project has two major goals. First, the investigators will develop an integrated, spatially explicit model of that predicts how much additional carbon sequestration will occur in Costa Rica if financial rewards for sequestration are offered. This modeling effort will include both economic modeling of land use and ecological modeling of carbon storage. Both sets of models will be based on empirical observations of carbon and nitrogen stocks and flows, with systematic sampling of variations in soils, climate, and land uses. The second major goal of the research will be to contribute to the effective design of rules that allow carbon-sequestration efforts in tropical locations to replace emission-reduction efforts in more developed nations. This line of inquiry will involve the conduct of sensitivity analyses on the integrated model in order to derive simplified versions of state-of-the-art disciplinary and integrated models. This effort will facilitate the search for estimate how much carbon sequestration will be generated in Costa Rica in response to different kinds of monetary rewards for carbon sequestration. This project will increase understandings of the interplay of socioeconomic and ecological factors that influence land-use choices as well as the effects of land-use change on carbon sequestration in Costa Rica, a representative nation with significant tropical forests and readily available data sources. In addition to addressing these fundamental issues, the project will explore the potential for simplified models to identify the potential implications of different carbon-sequestration incentives on land-use decisions, thereby providing valuable new insights into critical aspects of the Kyoto accord to reduce atmospheric carbon.