See Starinchak & Griscom 2024 for full details.
Tree carbon in pasturelands
Goals
1. Quantify tee carbon and diversity in temperate and tropical pasture systems.
2. Compare past remote estimates of tree carbon in temperate and tropical pastures with field measurements to assess their accuracy.
3. Determine stakeholder priorities and their relationship with sustainable management programs
Bela interviewing a landowner in Panama.
Collaborating organizations.
Undergrad Rachel measuring the dbh of a tree!
Methods
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I measured tree diversity and carbon storage across cattle farms in Virginia, United States and Los Santos, Panama.
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I developed a novel framework for upscaling field measurements of tree carbon in pasturelands to the parcel and regional levels.
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I conducted interviews with landowners and evaluated their responses using a qualitative components analysis to determine the effects of management programs on manager priorities.
Findings
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Remote analyses at a global scale tend to overestimate parcel-level tree carbon in beef pasture areas.
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Participation in conservation programs supports more comprehensive stakeholder goals.
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Silvopastoral management practices (SMPs) don't always result in greater tree carbon storage compared to conventional methods.
Results from Starinchak & Griscom 2024 showed an over-estimation of tree carbon from remote sensing datasets in pasturelands.
Example map of a farm used in the study, with unique tree classification applied. These classifications enabled up-scaling of the measurements. Made with ArcGIS Pro v 3.0.0
Sustainable management practitioners also anecdotally reported less incidence of tick-borne illness in their cattle.
A farmer shares his irrigation system. Water scarcity is a major concern in the tropical dry forests of Panama, and sustainable management practices that sequester carbon can also retain water within the landscape.
Implications
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Field measurements are needed to support more accurate remote analyses - particularly in the tropics where these types of resources have been historically limited.
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Funding for programs that support educational tools and capacity building, as well as physical and financial resources can facilitate holistic priorities -- which is good for restoration of these systems.
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Individual decision makers are the ultimate factor determining the ecological health of the pasture system. Research in human-dominated landscapes such as these must consider their perspectives and should incorporate socioecological dynamics.
Photo by Jake Slusser. ELTI leads capacity building courses that teach sustainable management practices.