Revised Tier 1 Carbon Stock Change Factors for Agroforestry: A
Critical Step for Improved MRV and national GHG reporting
Rémi Cardinael
Viviane Umulisa, Anass Toudert, Alain Olivier, Louis Bockel, and Martial Bernoux
remi.cardinael@cirad.fr
martial.bernoux@fao.org

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Agroforestry systems are part of a broader category: Perennial crop
(Volume 4 – AFOLU, Chapter 5 Cropland)
“Perennial crops include trees and shrubs, in combination with herbaceous crops (e.g.,
agroforestry) or as orchards, vineyards and plantations such as cocoa, coffee, tea, oil
palm, coconut, rubber trees, and bananas, except where these lands meet the criteria
for categorisation as Forest Land”

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Perennial crop: Above-ground Biomass
Tables 5.1 to 5.3 provide estimates of biomass stocks and biomass growth rates and
losses for major climatic regions and agricultural systems
Few non-specific data

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Perennial crop: Above-ground Biomass
Tables 5.1 to 5.3 provide estimates of biomass stocks and biomass growth rates and
losses for major climatic regions and agricultural systems
Few non-specific data

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Perennial crop: Below-ground Biomass
No-data

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Perennial crop: Soil Organic carbon - Mineral Soils
For mineral soils, the default method is based on changes in soil C
stocks over a finite period of time. The change is computed based on
C stock after the management change relative to the carbon stock in a
reference condition.
Default is 1
(no-change)

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A need to have more refined data !
Above-ground Biomass: Few non-specific data
Below-ground biomass: No data
Soil organic carbon: No change
Agroforestry in IPCC
Guidelines and
relevant tools

8Sites of published studies on SOC (circles) and biomass (triangles) storage in various agroforestry systems. A few
studies reported both SOC and biomass (squares).
122 scientific peer-reviewed articles associated
with biomass C storage (50) and with soil
organic carbon (SOC) (72) containing a total of
542 observations (324 and 218, respectively)
The full database is available in appendix 1 and 2,
available online at stacks.iop.org/ERL/13/124020/mmedia
A review of available coefficients for soil organic and biomass carbon storage in
agroforestry systems (using same typology and climate classification)
Cardinael et al., 2018, Env Res. Letter
doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaeb5f

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Example of result: SOC gain/loss in land-use changes to agroforestry systems
Cardinael et al., 2018, Env. Res. Letter - doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/aaeb5f

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This review served as the basis to update Agroforestry default (above-ground and below
ground biomass and accumulation rates) in the 2019 Refinement of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines
© Picture: cf https://www.cirad.fr/en/news/all-news-items/articles/2018/science/agroforestry-and-ipcc-carbon-coefficients
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This review served as the basis to update Agroforestry default (above-ground and below
ground biomass and growth rates) in the 2019 Refinement of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines

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Sunday 12th May 2019, ~11pm

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EF=1
Few non-
specific data 2006
2019
Now we can have a better recognition
and representation of “agroforestry”
in national inventories, Nationally
Determined Contribution (Paris
Agreement), and any project or policy
implemented.

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 Coefficients submitted to the Emission Factor Data Base (EFDB) of the IPCC.
Accessible to everyone
 First step based on peer-reviewed papers.
Refine these coefficients with data from the grey literature
 Incorporate these coefficients into carbon calculators

http://www.fao.org/3/a-i8075e.pdf
The Ex-Ante Carbon-balance Tool (EX-ACT) is
an appraisal system developed by FAO
providing estimates of the impact of
agriculture and forestry development
projects, programmes and policies on the
net balance from all GHGs expressed in CO2
equivalent that were emitted or sequestered
due to project implementation as compared
to a business-as-usual scenario
http://www.fao.org/tc/exact/ex-act-home/en/
Free E-learning:
https://olc.worldbank.org/
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Revised Tier 1 Carbon Stock Change Factors for Agroforestry: A
Critical Step for Improved MRV and national GHG reporting
Many thanks for your attention
The authors thanks the following support
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remi.cardinael@cirad.fr
martial.bernoux@fao.org