BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
MEMBERS of Siporae Protected Area under the Babatana Rainforest conservation project recently conduct a pre harvesting inventory for carbon calculation.
Trees in 26 plots out of a total hectors of 647 within the eligible area of Siporae tribal land was calculated using the method called ‘circular plot’.
The objective is to collect ground-based data on the commercial tree species and timber volume for payment for Ecosystem Service (PES )project development under Nakau Programmes Technical Specifications Module.
The Pre Harvesting Inventory aims to determine the timber volume that would be extracted in the logging baseline where only commercial trees need to be assessed.
The Commercial trees are species with commercially valuable timber and good or average stem form.
In this field work, members identified the trees according to its species or family and record their local and botanical name.
Non-commercial species with low-value timber or commercial species of poor form will not need to be sampled even if it’s size went above the minimum diameter limit.
The minimum diameter of sample trees may vary from project to project, which probably may be as low as 30cm in some areas.
Accurate estimate of timber volume for harvesting is important in the baseline to calculate associated forest biomass loss and carbon emissions for the PES project feasibility and develop project design.
Siporae protected area was amongst the six tribal lands conserved under the Babanata rainforest conservation project which was established in 2014.
