The DOI matches its Crossref record; 29 of the 29 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Critical need for new definitions of “forest” and “forest degradation” in global climate change agreements
Open accessAbstract
If global policies intended to promote forest conservation continue to use the definition of “forest” adopted in 2001 by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (an area of >0.05–1 ha with >10–30% cover of plants >2–5 m tall at maturity), great quantities of carbon and other environmental values will be lost when natural forests are severely degraded or replaced by plantations but technically remain “forests.” While a definition of “forest” that is globally acceptable and appropriate for monitoring using standard remote sensing options will necessarily be based on a small set of easily measured parameters, there are dangers when simple definitions are applied locally. At the very least, we recommend that natural forest be differentiated from plantations and that for defining “forest” the lower height limit defining “trees” be set at more than 5 m tall with the minimum cover of trees be set at more than 40%. These changes will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions from what is now termed forest “degradation” without increasing monitoring costs. Furthermore, these minor changes in the definition of “forest” will promote the switch from degradation to responsible forest management, which will help mitigate global warming while protecting biodiversity and contributing to sustainable development.
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Cites
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Prediction of the distribution of Arctic‐nesting pink‐footed geese under a warmer climate scenario
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Cited by
Mapping global forest canopy height through integration of GEDI and Landsat data
Potapov, P., Li, X., Hernandez-Serna, A., Tyukavina, A., Hansen, M. C., Kommareddy, A., Pickens, A., Turubanova, S., Tang, H., Silva, C. E., et al. (2021) · Remote Sensing of Environment · doi:10.1016/j.rse.2020.112165 · Cited by 1,383
Porter-Bolland, L., Ellis, E. A., Guariguata, M. R., Ruiz-Mallén, I., Negrete-Yankelevich, S., & Reyes-García, V. (2012) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2011.05.034 · Cited by 755
Tropical grassy biomes: misunderstood, neglected, and under threat
Parr, C. L., Lehmann, C. E. R., Bond, W. J., Hoffmann, W. A., & Andersen, A. N. (2014) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2014.02.004 · Cited by 603
Disentangling the numbers behind agriculture-driven tropical deforestation
Pendrill, F., Gardner, T. A., Meyfroidt, P., Persson, U. M., Adams, J., Azevedo, T., Bastos Lima, M. G., Baumann, M., Curtis, P. G., De Sy, V., et al. (2022) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.abm9267 · Cited by 572
Mapping the deforestation footprint of nations reveals growing threat to tropical forests
Hoang, N. T., & Kanemoto, K. (2021) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-021-01417-z · Cited by 359
Metadata
- Authors
- Sasaki, N., & Putz, F. E.
- Venue
- Conservation Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2009-10
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 226-232
- ISSN
- 1755-263X (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2168931046
- Cited by
- 420
- References
- 29
- FWCI
- 21.10
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
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- Sasaki, N., & Putz, F. E. (2009). Critical need for new definitions of “forest” and “forest degradation” in global climate change agreements. Conservation Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1755-263x.2009.00067.x
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
