{"id":34777,"date":"2025-04-06T07:45:26","date_gmt":"2025-04-06T05:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/?p=34777"},"modified":"2025-04-06T07:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-06T05:52:10","slug":"database-of-spatial-boundaries-of-nature-based-carbon-offset-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/2025\/04\/06\/database-of-spatial-boundaries-of-nature-based-carbon-offset-projects\/","title":{"rendered":"Database of spatial boundaries of nature-based carbon offset projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

This one study guide<\/span><\/a> details the creation and content of an open database of geographic boundaries of natural carbon offset projects. These natural climate solutions (NCS) have become an important part of strategies aimed at reducing atmospheric CO2 and mitigating the impacts of climate change. Carbon offsets have become one of the most widely used NBS strategies, but these projects have been criticized for overcompensating.<\/p>\n

Verification of the effectiveness of NBS-derived carbon offsets is complicated by the lack of readily available geospatial data on project boundaries.<\/strong> Although the carbon credit trading market is growing, concerns have emerged regarding the issuance of credits, human rights abuses, and accounting errors, calling into question the effectiveness of natural carbon projects.<\/p>\n

To address issues associated with NBS project boundaries, a global database of spatial boundaries of 575 natural forest carbon projects in 55 countries was created.<\/strong> This database contains three types of projects: avoided deforestation (AD), afforestation, forest restoration and revegetation (ARR) and improved forest management (IFM). The projects in the database are registered in six carbon registries: American Carbon Registry, BioCarbon Standard, Climate Action Reserve, EcoRegistry, Gold Standard and Verra.<\/p>\n

The boundary data was obtained using a combination of methods:<\/strong> data extraction from carbon project registries (n = 433, 75.3%), manual georeferencing and digitization (n = 127, 22.1%). If geospatial data was not available, project managers were contacted. If data could not be obtained, manual georeferencing and digitization of project boundaries was performed using QGIS software. In some cases, where project boundaries were distributed as linear features, these were processed to obtain polygon boundaries. For six projects, boundaries were created based on the procedure described in the project documentation (PDD).<\/p>\n

The database distinguishes between the project area (the geographical area where deforestation reduction activities are implemented) and the project accounting area (the geographical area used to calculate the carbon credits issued).<\/strong> In most cases (83%) these two areas are the same.<\/p>\n

The accuracy assessment of the georeferencing and digitization process demonstrated a high level of accuracy (Intersection over Union (IoU) score of 0.98 \u00b1 0.015).<\/strong><\/p>\n

The database contains geo packages (.gpkg) for each continent and a CSV index file.<\/strong> Each record contains attributes such as project name, project ID, registry name, methodology, project type, country, developer name, project start and end dates, date added to the database, and boundary processing information. Geo packages contain geospatial representations of the project area and project accounting area in Well-Known Text (WKT) format.<\/p>\n

The effort to create this database aims to democratize access to project boundaries for future measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) initiatives.<\/strong> This database will enable more comprehensive analyses of the climate benefits provided by NBS and is consistent with the objectives of regulatory and industry standards, such as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) Core Principles, which require transparency in the reporting of carbon projects.<\/p>\n

Users should be aware of some database limitations.<\/strong> The database does not represent an inventory of all natural carbon projects and does not include all types of projects. Users should verify that any georeferencing inaccuracies will not significantly affect their analyses. The database reflects the data available in the registries at the time of access and users should carefully distinguish between the total project area and the project accounting area. The accuracy of boundaries created from linear features or according to the protocol provided by the developer has not been verified and users are encouraged to assess these boundaries on an individual basis.<\/p>\n

Project boundary data was derived using QGIS software.<\/strong> The database is open and available on the Zenodo platform. Spring<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Glossary of key terms<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  • Nature-based climate solutions (NBS):<\/strong> Measures that use natural ecosystems or approaches inspired by them to address climate change while providing other environmental, social and economic benefits.<\/li>\n
  • Carbon offsets:<\/strong> Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or increases in carbon sequestration in one location that are used to offset emissions elsewhere. Often traded as carbon credits.<\/li>\n
  • Geospatial boundary data:<\/strong> Information about the geographic extent of projects or areas, usually represented as polygons, lines, or points with associated coordinates.<\/li>\n
  • Carbon project registries:<\/strong> Databases that contain information about carbon projects, including their description, methodology, and carbon credits issued.<\/li>\n
  • Georeferencing \/ Georeferencing:<\/strong> The process of assigning geographic coordinates to points on a map or other image material so that they can be precisely located in space.<\/li>\n
  • Digitization:<\/strong> The process of converting analog data (e.g., paper maps) into digital form, for example by creating vector features (points, lines, polygons) in a geographic information system (GIS).<\/li>\n
  • Avoided deforestation (AD):<\/strong> A type of carbon project that aims to prevent planned or unplanned deforestation and thereby prevent the release of stored carbon.<\/li>\n
  • Afforestation, reforestation and re-vegetation (ARR):<\/strong> A type of carbon project that involves planting trees on areas where there were previously no forests (afforestation), on areas where forests have been removed (reforestation), or restoring vegetation cover.<\/li>\n
  • Improved forest management (IFM):<\/strong> A type of carbon project that implements management practices to increase carbon sequestration in existing forests compared to business as usual practices.<\/li>\n
  • Baseline emissions scenario:<\/strong> An estimate of greenhouse gas emissions that would likely occur in the absence of the implemented carbon project. Used to determine the additionality of emission reductions.<\/li>\n
  • Intersection over Union (IoU):<\/strong> A metric used to evaluate the overlap between two areas (e.g., a reference polygon and a digitized polygon). It is calculated as the ratio of the area of their intersection to the area of their union.<\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This study guide details the creation and content of an open database of geographic boundaries of natural carbon offset projects. These natural climate solutions (NCS) have become an important part of strategies<\/p>","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-offsetove-projekty","category-uhlikove-kredity"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34777\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}