VALUING TREES AND FORESTS AS CARBON SINKS

The assessment authorized by DENR Regional Executive Director Gwendolyn Bambalan was in conformity of the issuance of Ecosystems Research and Development Technical Bulletin No. 01 s. 2021 known as "Whole-Ecosystem Carbon Stock and Sequestration Assessment".

 

It also aims to account the value of trees and forests as carbon sinks that help mitigate the worsening effects of climate change.

A study said forests are world’s largest carbon sinks. They absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and are stored in different repositories called carbon pools such as trees, root systems, and soil.

 

In a Workshop on Carbon Sequestration Data Analysis on Nov. 17-18, this year, held in Diffun, Quirino, PENR Officer Mariam Frances Malana stressed the need to be more vigilant in protecting the forest areas.

 

“Our natural resource conservation monitoring activity will now include the assessment of the amount of carbon stored in the different carbon pools,” said PENRO Malana.

 

During the workshop facilitated by the Conservation and Development Division, the regional and field NGP coordinators in the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Quirino and Nueva Vizcaya presented their respective datasets collected in NGP pilot sites which were subjected for analysis using relevant statistical tools.

 

"This biological carbon sequestration aims to aid in effective and efficient ENR planning, policy formulation, and decision-making process toward climate resiliency," said regional conservation and development chief Enrique Pasion who led the team in capacitating the technical personnel in the computation and analysis of data.

 

Forester Pasion also emphasized the integrity of gathering data needed for analysis per major carbon pool in a forested system.

Considering the different steps of said assessment, the DENR is currently consolidating the amount of stored or sequestered tons of carbon per hectare within the selected NGP reforestation areas.#