Carbon Sequestration Modeling: A Case Study of Inadequacies on the Rensselaer Plateau

Abstract

Carbon sequestration is the process by which plants pull carbon from the atmosphere and store it on the surface of the earth. Understanding that process is important to be able to use land to mitigate the worst impacts of human-caused climate change. We know the rates at which individual plant species can sequester carbon and the rates at which different biomes can sequester carbon. However, we lack a clear understanding of how different ecological community and land cover types differ in their carbon sequestration capabilities within a biome; therefore, I compared the productivity of ecosystem community types and land cover types on the Rensselaer Plateau in New York, USA. I used MOD17 satellite carbon sequestration modeling to compare the proportions of ecosystem community types and land cover types present in notably productive and notably unproductive areas. This comparison should have yielded ecological community types and land cover types that are over- and underrepresented in highly productive or unproductive areas. Instead, I demonstrate that the resolution of available topical satellite data is insufficient to draw conclusions about fine-scale differences in carbon sequestration potentials of different types of land within a biome. The mismatched resolutions of the carbon sequestration modeling and the ecological community type and land cover classification data introduce too much inaccuracy to draw meaningful conclusions. This data gap must be closed so policymakers and land conservation entities can proactively and efficiently maximize the carbon sequestration potential climate change mitigation projects and initiatives.