The large-scale potential of regenerating Cerrado and Atlantic Forests for atmospheric carbon removal

Abstract

Understanding changes in aboveground biomass (AGB) stocks in regenerating tropical forests for the purposes of environmental restoration is essential to determine the ecosystem services provided by forests and to support international forest restoration agreements and the UN Decade of Ecological Restoration. This Postdoctoral (PD) grant aims to support research within the Nature Based Solutions component of the project supported by Shell-FAPESP. The selected candidate will collaborate with researchers from the RestoreC project at FAPESP-Shell POLI-USP Research Center for Gas Innovation at the University of São Paulo. Summary of the program and projects can be found on the RCGI website (http://www.rcgi.poli.USP.br/).This PD grant will aim to quantify the large-scale potential of annual carbon removals by forest restoration in the Cerrado and Atlantic Forest biomes as a basis for prioritizing different locally assessed restoration strategies. The PD fellow will be crucial to analyze information derived from special high and moderate resolution remote sensing (including LIDAR) combined with geoprocessing methods and field-based inventory data to obtain large-scale information about regenerating areas in both biomes, their age under different environmental and climatic conditions to produce C accumulation curves and map the potential of these phytophysiognomies to sequester and accumulate carbon. (AU)