TOF Workshop

Background

Trees outside the forest (TOF) play a significant role in context of biodiversity, carbon sequestration and other ecosystem functions on landscape level. With a shift towards a more holistic view on the landscape as a whole, these resources are gaining more and more attention also in context of international conventions and agreements like UNFCCC, CBD or REDD+. In many countries of the world carbon stocks in TOF are significantly higher than those of forest areas that comply with a forest definition. The increasing information need on such resources triggers discussions on options and restrictions in regard to their monitoring. Standard forest inventory approaches usually fail for the assessment of TOF resources, mainly because of their relatively low density and spatial distribution. From an inventory perspective TOF are a "rare event" and therefore a challenge for common sampling techniques.

A one-day workshop on TOF was held on October 30. at the Chair of Forest Inventory and Remote Sensing at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Participants from Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Cooperation), the World Bank and researchers from Göttingen came together to discuss general aspects of TOF and their assessment and questions on how to integrate TOF monitoring in national forest inventories.

Further information of the mission of Emprapa is available here.