The production of verifiable carbon credits requires an estimation of the net change in carbon emissions resulting from a climate change mitigation project. To estimate this change, the actual emissions that take place over the life of a project are compared with the modelled projection of emissions under the 'without project' or 'baseline' case. Formulation of this baseline case requires an estimate of carbon stock within the project site and also an estimate of the expected carbon stock of future land cover scenarios in the event of deforestation.
Between April and November of 2009, a joint FA and WCS field team, led by Mr. Nut Menghor of the FA, completed a number of inventories in the Seima Protection Forest (SPF) site to estimate carbon stocks. An initial pilot survey of 57 forest plots was conducted in order to inform the subsequent survey design.
This was followed by a forest inventory designed to obtain representative sample of carbon stock values from across the site. A total of 228 forest plots were surveyed over the course of three months, a notable achievement given the inaccessibility of the site and the difficulty of the forest terrain.
22 plots were then surveyed in an area adjacent to the project site in order to calculate the expected carbon stock of future land cover scenarios in the event of deforestation.