Environment

National Forest Carbon Inventory

LiDAR-assisted national forest carbon inventory establishing Tanzania's baseline forest biomass measurements for REDD+ compliance and international carbon credit verification.

Nationwide, Tanzania

2020–2022

Tanzania Forest Services & World Bank

48M ha

Forest Area Assessed

±5%

Carbon Stock Accuracy

4,200+

Field Plots Surveyed

Forest Strata Mapped

Environment Project

National Forest Carbon Inventory

The Challenge

What the Client Needed

Tanzania needed a scientifically defensible national forest carbon inventory to access international REDD+ financing and carbon credit markets. Existing forest data was outdated, inconsistent, and insufficient for international verification standards.

Our Solution

How TANGIS Delivered

TANGIS led the spatial data component of Tanzania's national forest carbon inventory — conducting airborne LiDAR surveys of representative forest strata, developing biomass-to-carbon conversion models calibrated against field data, and building a REDD+ compliance reporting platform.

Deliverables

Airborne LiDAR surveys across all major forest strata

Above-ground biomass estimation models

National forest carbon stock map

REDD+ compliance reporting platform

Field plot verification protocols

Carbon stock change detection methodology

Technologies Used

Airborne LiDAR (Leica ALS80)Sentinel-2 wall-to-wall mappingR statistical softwareArcGIS ProGoogle Earth EnginePython (scikit-learn, rasterio)PostgreSQL

Project Tags

LiDARCarbon InventoryREDD+Remote SensingForest Management

Outcomes & Impact

Results Delivered

Tanzania's first internationally verified national forest carbon baseline — enabling access to REDD+ financing

±5% carbon stock accuracy exceeds IPCC Tier 3 requirements

Carbon inventory methodology adopted as national standard by Tanzania Forest Services

First year REDD+ payment of $12M facilitated by the verified carbon baseline

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Results Delivered

Tanzania's first internationally verified national forest carbon baseline — enabling access to REDD+ financing

±5% carbon stock accuracy exceeds IPCC Tier 3 requirements

Carbon inventory methodology adopted as national standard by Tanzania Forest Services

First year REDD+ payment of $12M facilitated by the verified carbon baseline