Can Community Members Identify Tropical Tree Species for REDD+ Carbon and Biodiversity Measurements?
Biodiversity conservation is a required co-benefit of REDD+. Biodiversity monitoring is therefore needed, yet in most areas it will be constrained by limitations in the available human professional and financial resources. REDD+ programs that use forest plots for biomass monitoring may be able to take advantage of the same data for detecting changes in the tree diversity, using the richness and abundance of canopy trees as a proxy for biodiversity. If local community members are already assessing the above-ground biomass in a representative network of forest vegetation plots, it may require minimal further effort to collect data on the diversity of trees. We compare community members and trained scientists' data on tree diversity in permanent vegetation plots in montane forest in Yunnan, China. We show that local community members here can collect tree diversity data of comparable quality to trained botanists, at one third the cost. Without access to herbaria, identification guides or the Internet, community members could provide the ethno-taxonomical names for 95% of 1071 trees in 60 vegetation plots. Moreover, we show that the community-led survey spent 89% of the expenses at village level as opposed to 23% of funds in the monitoring by botanists. In participatory REDD+ programs in areas where community members demonstrate great knowledge of forest trees, community-based collection of tree diversity data can be a cost-effective approach for obtaining tree diversity information.
Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.|World Agroforestry Centre, East and Central Asia, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
Mingxu
M
Zhao
Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.|Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology (NORDECO), Copenhagen, Denmark.
Søren
S
Brofeldt
Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China.|World Agroforestry Centre, East and Central Asia, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
Qiaohong
Q
Li
Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, China.|World Agroforestry Centre, East and Central Asia, Kunming, Yunnan, China.
Jianchu
J
Xu
Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology (NORDECO), Copenhagen, Denmark.
Finn
F
Danielsen
Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Simon Bjarke Lægaard
SB
Læssøe
Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology (NORDECO), Copenhagen, Denmark.
Michael Køie
MK
Poulsen
Nordic Foundation for Development and Ecology (NORDECO), Copenhagen, Denmark.
Anna
A
Gottlieb
Biology Department, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
James Franklin
JF
Maxwell
Department of Food and Resource Economics, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Ida
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3502-1277
I
Theilade
D044822:Biodiversity; D018533:Biomass; D002244:Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D002681:China; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources / Q000379:methods; D017753:Ecosystem; D065928:Forests; D006801:Humans; D014197:Trees / Q000145:classification*; D014329:Tropical Climate
D002244:Carbon