Stock di Carbonio Attuale - Totale

Land Usev08.00 credits/per_km2

Responsible:Niccolò Calandri

Current Carbon Stock — Total

Overview

The Current Carbon Stock — Total layer represents the comprehensive sum of all terrestrial carbon pools at a given location, expressed in tonnes of carbon per hectare (tC/ha). This is the most complete measure of ecosystem carbon storage, integrating:

Above-ground biomass (AGB) — carbon in trunks, branches, leaves, bark
Below-ground biomass (BGB) — carbon in root systems
Soil organic carbon (SOC) — carbon in the top 30 cm of soil
Dead organic matter — carbon in litter, deadwood, and coarse woody debris

Total carbon stock is the primary metric for ecosystem carbon baseline assessments, carbon credit project design, national greenhouse gas inventories (UNFCCC), and corporate ESG natural capital accounting. It provides the reference point against which future carbon gains (through restoration) or losses (through degradation) are measured.

Typical total carbon stocks range from near zero in deserts and urban areas to over 300 tC/ha in tropical peatland forests, where both soil and biomass carbon are exceptionally high.

Calculation Methodology

Random Forest downscaling pipeline for total carbon:

Baseline extraction — The Walker et al. 2022 total carbon density raster (all pools combined) is loaded from S3
Feature engineering — For each pixel:
- NDVI from Sentinel-2 — proxy for vegetation productivity and biomass
- Land cover class from Dynamic World — determines ecosystem type and typical carbon stocks
- Elevation from SRTM DEM — captures climatic gradients affecting all carbon pools
Training — Random Forest regressor trained on total carbon values
Prediction — Model predicts total carbon at ~200 m resolution
Validation — Cross-validation metrics (R-squared, RMSE)

Carbon pools included: AGB + BGB + SOC (top 30 cm) + dead organic matter

Output unit: tC/ha (all pools combined)

Data Sources

Code	Name	Provider	Type	Coverage	Resolution	Reference Year
Walker 2022	Global Carbon Density (Total)	Walker et al. / S3	Raster (COG)	Global	~300 m	2016
`COPERNICUS/S2_SR_HARMONIZED`	Sentinel-2 L2A	ESA/Copernicus	Multispectral	Global	10 m	2017 — present
`GOOGLE/DYNAMICWORLD/V1`	Dynamic World	Google/WRI	Land cover	Global	10 m	2015 — present
`USGS/SRTMGL1_003`	SRTM DEM	NASA/USGS	Elevation	60N-56S	30 m	2000

Quality Range and Levels

Indicator	Unit	Range	Inverted
`carbon_stock_current_total`	tC/ha	[0, 10, 30, 80, 150, 300]	No

Inverted = No: a higher value indicates greater total carbon storage.

Level	Thresholds	Interpretation
E (Very Low)	< 10 tC/ha	Bare soil, urban, desert
D (Low)	10-30 tC/ha	Sparse vegetation, degraded land
C (Moderate)	30-80 tC/ha	Grasslands, croplands, young forests
B (High)	80-150 tC/ha	Mature temperate forests, dense shrublands
A (Very High)	> 150 tC/ha	Tropical forests, peatlands, old-growth forests

Technical Notes

Total carbon stock = AGB + BGB + SOC (0-30 cm) + dead organic matter
This metric is equivalent to the generic carbon_stock layer but explicitly labeled as the current state
The relative contribution of each pool varies by ecosystem: forests are biomass-dominated, grasslands are SOC-dominated
Dead organic matter (litter, deadwood) typically represents 5-15% of total carbon

References

Walker, W.S. et al. (2022). "The global potential for increased storage of carbon on land". PNAS, 119(23), e2111312119.
Spawn, S.A. et al. (2020). "Harmonized global maps of above and belowground biomass carbon density in the year 2010". Scientific Data, 7, Article 112.
Breiman, L. (2001). "Random Forests". Machine Learning, 45(1), pp. 5-32.

Data Sources & References

Sources

WRD_CARBN_22

Methodology

Il layer Carbon Stock Attuale - Totale viene calcolato utilizzando la mappa globale di densita di carbonio totale di Walker et al. (2022), che include tutti i pool: biomassa aerea (AGB), biomassa sotterranea (BGB), carbonio organico del suolo (SOC, primi 30 cm) e materia organica morta (lettiera, legno morto). Il raster baseline a ~300 m viene raffinato tramite Random Forest con NDVI (Sentinel-2), copertura del suolo (Dynamic World) ed elevazione (SRTM). Questa metrica rappresenta la misura piu completa dello stoccaggio di carbonio ecosistemico ed e equivalente al layer generico carbon_stock. Output in tC/ha a ~200 m.