Javier G. P. Gamarra

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations | FAO · Forestry Division

The use of fractals in ecology is currently pervasive over many areas. However, very few studies have linked fractal properties of landscapes to generating ecological mechanisms and dynamics. In this study I show that lacunarity (a measure of the landscape texture) is a well suited ecologically scaled landscape index that can be explicitly incorpor...

In the current Higher Education climate, there is a pressing need to integrate research and teaching in the student learning experience. In order to create synergy between research and teaching activities, to the benefit of students and instructors, we provided students with the opportunity to participate in a high profile collaboration between two...

The need to provide transparent and reliable Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission estimates is strongly emphasized in the context of international reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. Yet it is difficult to find specific guidance about what information is really needed to evaluate the...

Estimating emissions and removals from forest degradation is important, yet challenging, for many countries. This paper reports results from analysis of country reporting (to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and also to several climate finance initiatives) and key take-aways from a south-south exchange workshop among 17 cou...

The density of wood is a key indicator of the carbon investment strategies of trees, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here we analyse information from 1.1 mil...

Background Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) is a program established under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to reduce carbon emissions from forests in developing countries. REDD+ uses an incentive-based approach whereby participating countries are paid to reduce forest carbon los...

Forests are essential for maintaining the ecological balance of the planet and providing critical ecosystem services. Amidst an increasing rate of global forest loss due to various natural and anthropogenic factors, many countries are committed to battling forest loss by planting new forests. Despite the reported national statistics on the land are...

A través de su Programa forestal, la FAO ayuda a proteger, restablecer y promover el uso sostenible de los bosques a lo largo y ancho del planeta, y fomentar su contribución al desarrollo sostenible. Muchos profesionales españoles contribuyen hoy en día a la labor de la FAO en el sector forestal y en este artículo se describe parte de ese trabajo,...

The emergence of alternative stable states in forest systems has significant implications for the functioning and structure of the terrestrial biosphere, yet empirical evidence remains scarce. Here, we combine global forest biodiversity observations and simulations to test for alternative stable states in the presence of evergreen and deciduous for...

Introduction Mounting evidence suggests that geographic ranges of tree species worldwide are shifting under global environmental changes. Little is known, however, about if and how these species’ range shifts may trigger the range shifts of various types of forests. Markowitz’s portfolio theory of investment and its broad application in ecology sug...

The density of wood is a key indicator of trees’ carbon investment strategies, impacting productivity and carbon storage. Despite its importance, the global variation in wood density and its environmental controls remain poorly understood, preventing accurate predictions of global forest carbon stocks. Here, we analyze information from 1.1 million...

Quantifying uncertainty is important to establishing the significance of comparisons, to making predictions with known confidence, and to identifying priorities for investment. However, uncertainty can be difficult to quantify correctly. While sampling error is commonly reported based on replicate measurements, the uncertainty in regression models...

Aim To determine the relationships between the functional trait composition of forest communities and environmental gradients across scales and biomes and the role of species relative abundances in these relationships. Location Global. Time period Recent. Major taxa studied Trees. Methods We integrated species abundance records from worldw...

Forests are a substantial terrestrial carbon sink, but anthropogenic changes in land use and climate have considerably reduced the scale of this system¹. Remote-sensing estimates to quantify carbon losses from global forests2–5 are characterized by considerable uncertainty and we lack a comprehensive ground-sourced evaluation to benchmark these est...

This code demonstrates three ways of propagating the uncertainty of total foliar Ca of forested stands that contain different numbers of individual trees. This code can recreate the analyses of Yanai et al. (2023) in Ecosystems, entitled: Propagating uncertainty in predicting individuals and means illustrated with foliar chemistry and forest biomas...

Understanding what controls global leaf type variation in trees is crucial for comprehending their role in terrestrial ecosystems, including carbon, water and nutrient dynamics. Yet our understanding of the factors influencing forest leaf types remains incomplete, leaving us uncertain about the global proportions of needle-leaved, broadleaved, ever...

Determining the drivers of non-native plant invasions is critical for managing native ecosystems and limiting the spread of invasive species1,2. Tree invasions in particular have been relatively overlooked, even though they have the potential to transform ecosystems and economies3,4. Here, leveraging global tree databases5-7, we explore how the phy...

Planted forests are critical to climate change mitigation and constitute a major supplier of timber/non-timber products and other ecosystem services. Globally, approximately 36% of planted forest area is located in East Asia. However, reliable records of the geographic distribution and tree species composition of these planted forests remain very l...

1. Biodiversity is an important component of natural ecosystems, with higher species richness often correlating with an increase in ecosystem productivity. Yet, this relationship varies substantially across environments, typically becoming less pronounced at high levels of species richness. However, species richness alone cannot reflect all importa...

Forest degradation is a key source of greenhouse gas emissions from forests. Global-scale estimates indicate that forest degradation can account for approximately one-quarter to three-quarters of the total emissions from deforestation and degradation combined; in some countries, it represents the most significant source of emissions from forests. E...

Quantifying uncertainty in forest assessments is challenging because of the number of sources of error and the many possible approaches to quantify and propagate them. The uncertainty in allometric equations has sometimes been represented by propagating uncertainty only in the prediction of individuals, but at large scales with large numbers of tre...

Open forest data is critical for the monitoring of natural resources, tailored programming and policy interventions, the evaluation of their impacts, as well as the advancement of science through novel research. It is also critical for tracking progress on the Sustainable Development Goals of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement commitments. In...

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is one of the most recognized global patterns of species richness exhibited across a wide range of taxa. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed in the past two centuries to explain LDG, but rigorous tests of the drivers of LDGs have been limited by a lack of high-quality global species richness data. Here we...

National forest inventories (NFIs) are a reliable source for national forest measurements. However, they are usually not developed for linking with remotely sensed (RS) biomass information. There are increasing needs and opportunities to facilitate this link toward better global and national biomass estimation. Thus, it is important to study and un...

Three options for the sampling design of the field plot clusters of NAFORMA II biophysical survey are compared in this report. Option 1 consists of re-measuring all NAFORMA I field sample plots (3 205 clusters) and Option 2 of re-measuring only those that were established as permanent (848 clusters). The recommended Option 3 is a compromise betwe...

One of the most fundamental questions in ecology is how many species inhabit the Earth. However, due to massive logistical and financial challenges and taxonomic difficulties connected to the species concept definition, the global numbers of species, including those of important and well-studied life forms such as trees, still remain largely unknow...

The Paris Agreement on Climate Change rests upon a foundation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) originally submitted by Parties to the Convention in 2015, and formally adopted in November 2016 as the Agreement entered into force. Each NDC represents the national plans and pledges individual countries have made to meet the universal goal...

One of the most fundamental questions in ecology is how many species inhabit the Earth. However, due to massive logistical and financial challenges and taxonomic difficulties connected to the species concept definition, the global numbers of species, including those of important and well-studied life forms such as trees, still remain largely unknow...

Significance Tree diversity is fundamental for forest ecosystem stability and services. However, because of limited available data, estimates of tree diversity at large geographic domains still rely heavily on published lists of species descriptions that are geographically uneven in coverage. These limitations have precluded efforts to generate a g...

For monitoring and reporting forest carbon stocks and fluxes, many countries in the tropics and subtropics rely on default values of forest aboveground biomass (AGB) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Inventories. Default IPCC forest AGB values originated from 2006, and are relativ...

Mounting evidence suggests that geographic ranges of tree species worldwide are shifting under global environmental change, but little is known about forest migration—the shift in the geographic ranges of forest types—and how it differs from individual tree species migration. Here, based on in situ records of more than 9 million trees from 596,282...

Reductions in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are urgently needed to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of warming. Reducing deforestation and forest degradation presents a climate change mitigation opportunity critical to meeting Paris Agreement goals. One strategy for decreasing carbon emissions from forests is to provide dev...

Open access to global forest data, especially ground-measured (in situ) records, is critical for saving the world's forest systems. Integrated approaches to achieve sustainable data openness will involve legal assurances, shared ethics, innovative funding schemes and capacity development.

Tropical deforestation drivers are complex and can change rapidly in periods of profound societal transformation, such as those during a pandemic. Evidence suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred illegal, opportunistic forest clearing in tropical countries, threatening forest ecosystems and their resident human communities. A total of 9,583...

Decisions based on data and analysis are often deemed to produce a better outcome and providing decision-makers with information is seen as an important development strategy. The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals reinforces the importance of sciencepolicy linkages. In the forestry sector, efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation a...

A major component of upgrading and improving the National Forest Monitoring System of Myanmar is the planning of a new National Forest Inventory (NFI) able to provide reliable information on the state of the forests and their changes over time for multiple purposes, including climate change and REDD+ related reporting. Planning a new NFI requires a...

This report provides an update on forest reference (emission) levels (FREL/FRLs) and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation Plus (REDD+) results submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and relevant developments under the Green Climate Fund concerning REDD+ results-based payments. It ill...

In this Letter, a middle initial and additional affiliation have been added for author G. J. Nabuurs; two statements have been added to the Supplementary Acknowledgements; and a citation to the French National Institute has been added to the Methods; see accompanying Author Correction for further details.

2019, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited. In this Letter, the middle initial of author G. J. Nabuurs was omitted, and he should have been associated with an additional affiliation: ‘Forest Ecology and Forest Management Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands’ (now added as affiliation 18...

A spatially explicit global map of tree symbioses with nitrogen-fixing bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi reveals that climate variables are the primary drivers of the distribution of different types of symbiosis.

The need to provide transparent and reliable Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission estimates is strongly emphasized in the context of international reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Paris Agreement. Yet it is difficult to find specific guidance about what information is really needed to evaluate the...

Monografías Instituto Serranía Celtibérica nº 3 , Registro General de Propiedad Intelectual. Solicitud. Nº TE – 8 - 19

The spatial distribution of biomass is key to optimize forest inventory designs to estimate forest aboveground biomass. Point process theory sets an appropriate mathematical framework to model the spatial distribution of trees, then to derive analytical expressions for the relationship between the variance of biomass in plots and the characteristic...

With warming climate many species are predicted to shift their distributions toward the poles. However, climate change models developed to predict species distributions do not always incorporate interactions between them. The northerly shift of the boreal forest and associated dwarf shrub communities will be directly affected by warming. But warmin...

The objective of this report is to provide an update of the GlobAllomeTree database with relevant tree allometric models for seven Southeast Asian countries - Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam. Models are obtained from both peer-reviewed scientific literature and national technical repor...

The landmark Paris Agreement on climate change has created a new context for international efforts to mitigate climate change and affirmed the existing framework for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and the role of sustainable management of forests, conservation and enhancement of forest carbon stocks, known as REDD+. Wi...

Large-area forest inventories are often undertaken following a stratified random or systematic design. Yet the strata rarely correspond to the reporting areas of interest (domains) over which the country wants to report specific variables. The process is exemplified by a country aiming to use national forest inventory data to obtain average biomass...

Large scale forest inventories are often undertaken following a stratified random or systematic design. Yet the strata rarely correspond to the reporting areas of interest (domains) over which the country wants to report specific variables. The process is exemplified by a country aiming to use national forest inventory data to obtain average biomas...

In many countries, inventory data or biomass or volume equations are often incomplete or unavailable. Either taxonomic information is not accurate at the species level, or else no literature exist compiling particular allometric equations for some species. On the other hand, some species are represented by many alternative equations in the database...

The choice of biomass and volume models is one of the main sources of uncertainty in forest biomass assessment. The quality of the dataset used to develop the equations, the statistical procedures used for modelling and the accuracy in reporting the results vary greatly among the models. Recent studies highlighted that about 25% of the published eq...

Estimating tree and forest biomass is a cornerstone of forest resource assessment. In addition to its application in forest-related commerce, forest resource assessment is becoming increasingly crucial in light of continued global deforestation and climate change. The most frequently used methods for estimating forest biomass involve allometric equ...

UN-­‐REDD Programme MRV report XX