Tropical Deforestation and Carbon Emission: Estimations Based on Remote Sensing

M. Mahmudur Rahman Tropical Deforestation and Carbon Emission: Estimations Based on Remote Sensing 2008. 260 Seiten. Preis 39,80 Euro. ISBN 978-3-938807-73-6. Rhombos-Verlag, Berlin. The Issue of climate change is often discussed by the environmentalists and carbon emission is one of the main drivers of this threat. Increasing accumulation of atmospheric CO2 is the consequence of human activities including fossil-fuel emission and deforestation. Our civilization would not be able to drastically cut fossil-fuel burning unless an alternative source of energy is discovered. On the other hand, global carbon emission can be reduced by halting deforestation. This research work contributes to integrate remote sensing and terrestrial sample-based forest inventory data for estimation of carbon pool in a forest ecosystem using an alternate regression technique. Regression has been used to estimate forest biomass (carbon stocks) from remotely sensed data over decades. The investigation applied dummy variables in regression analysis and the dummies were set from the optimal stratification of forest-land. The finding increased the correlation that often used as an indicator of precision in regression modelling. Tropical forest region of south-eastern Bangladesh was selected as test-site, which has been affected by deforestation in the past decades. Finally, the study estimated the amount of carbon released with the result of forest cover change in the region. The technique proposed in this study can be extended to the deforestation hotspots to estimate carbon emission and would help to understand the terrestrial carbon dynamics and global climate change.