Pontus Olofsson
Boston University, Earth & Environment, Faculty Member
The effects of land use change on terrestrial carbon budgets for the Black Sea Region were investigated using remote sensing, forest inventory data, and a carbon model. We focus on three countries in the region: Romania, Georgia and... more
The effects of land use change on terrestrial carbon budgets for the Black Sea Region were investigated using remote sensing, forest inventory data, and a carbon model. We focus on three countries in the region: Romania, Georgia and Turkey. Rates of land use change between circa-1990 and circa-2000 were quantified by analyzing Landsat imagery. A carbon book-keeping model was used
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A regional scale examination of the effects of land use change on the terrestrial carbon budgets of New England from 1700 to 2100 indicates New England has been a carbon sink since about 1900 because of agricultural land abandonment that... more
A regional scale examination of the effects of land use change on the terrestrial carbon budgets of New England from 1700 to 2100 indicates New England has been a carbon sink since about 1900 because of agricultural land abandonment that began in the mid 1800s and subsequent forest regrowth. However, recent land use change for new development has resulted in
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As production of global land cover products from remote sensing becomes more routine, new data sets and methods in support of global land cover validation are urgently needed. In this paper we describe efforts to (1) compile a new global... more
As production of global land cover products from remote sensing becomes more routine, new data sets and methods in support of global land cover validation are urgently needed. In this paper we describe efforts to (1) compile a new global reference land cover validation database, and (2) develop standardized accuracy assessment procedures to validate regional and global land cover products.
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Research Interests:
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A global validation database that can be used to assess the accuracy of multiple global and regional land-cover maps would yield significant cost savings and enhance comparisons of accuracy of different maps. Because the global validation... more
A global validation database that can be used to assess the accuracy of multiple global and regional land-cover maps would yield significant cost savings and enhance comparisons of accuracy of different maps. Because the global validation database should expand over time as new validation data are contributed, the sampling design must be constructed so that it is simple to increase the sample size from a specific region (e.g. a continent or country) or from targeted land-cover classes to improve standard errors of the accuracy estimates. Stratified random sampling provides the desired adaptability to augment a sample to address regional or class-specific accuracy objectives. The proposed global validation database will be initiated from a baseline global stratified sample and then this baseline sample will be augmented to address accuracy objectives related to a specific map or region. The strata are constructed from a modified Köppen climate classification and population density. T...
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Research Interests: Eastern Europe, Carbon Sequestration, Carbon Cycle, Global Change Biology, Land Use Change, and 13 moreBiological Sciences, Global change, Environmental Sciences, Global Carbon Cycle, Land Use, Carbon Storage, former Soviet Union, Soviet Union, Land cover change, Carbon Emissions, Forest Inventory, Forest Cover, and Carbon Source
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The effects of land use change on terrestrial carbon budgets for the Black Sea Region were investigated using remote sensing, forest inventory data, and a carbon model. We focus on three countries in the region: Romania, Georgia and... more
The effects of land use change on terrestrial carbon budgets for the Black Sea Region were investigated using remote sensing, forest inventory data, and a carbon model. We focus on three countries in the region: Romania, Georgia and Turkey. Rates of land use change between circa-1990 and circa-2000 were quantified by analyzing Landsat imagery. A carbon book-keeping model was used to quantify these effects in Romania. In Georgia, illegal logging and state-controlled forest harvest are the main sources of land use change. Our analysis shows a small amount of land use change — in the relatively populous Ajdara region, 2.5% of the forested area in 1990 had been converted to non-forest in 2000. Even less land use change was found in Turkey — for the Northeastern part of the country bordering Georgia, 0.28% of the forested land (1,113 ha) had been converted to non forest over the period 1990–2000. For the whole country of Romania, the corresponding number was 2.4%. Integrating this harvest rate with forest inventory data in the carbon book-keeping model indicates that Romanian forests are currently a carbon sink and will remain so until about 2080 if current harvesting rates persist. The current carbon sink of 2.54 TgC/year is approximately 10% of the anthropogenic emission from fossil fuels in Romania.
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Page 1. Remote sensing for estimating the carbon balance in Nordic countries Lars Eklundh1, Pontus Olofsson2, Helena Eriksson1, Anna Maria Jönsson1 1Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystems Analysis, Lund University, Lund, Sweden ...