Implications of land use change on the national terrestrial carbon budget of Georgia

The remote sensing analysis showed that a modest forest loss occurred, with approximately 0.8% of the forest cover having disappeared after 1990. Nevertheless, growth of Georgian forests still contribute a current national sink of about 0.3 Tg of carbon per year, which corresponds to 31% of the country anthropogenic carbon emissions.We assume that the observed forest loss is mainly a result of illegal logging, but we have not found any evidence of large-scale clear-cutting. Instead local harvesting of timber for household use is likely to be the underlying driver of the observed logging. The Georgian forests are a currently a carbon sink and will remain as such until about 2040 if the current rate of deforestation persists. Forest protection efforts, combined with economic growth, are essential for reducing the rate of deforestation and protecting the carbon sink provided by Georgian forests.The increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide is primarily a result of fossil fuel burning and conversion of land use, with one third of the increase since 1750 being attributed to land use change [1]. In its Fourth Assessment Report, The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that forest degradation and deforestation is now contributing almost 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere [2]. Accordingly, there is an immediate need to reduce the current rates of forest loss and degradation, and the associated release of carbon dioxide. However, we continue to lose forest at an alarming rate - the net loss in global forest area between 2000 and 2005 was about 7 million ha per year, which is equivalent to a net loss of 20,000 ha of forest each day [3]. For humid tropical forests alone, 4.5 million hectares per year were deforested during the same time period according to remote sensing estimates [4]. Besides the associated emission of carbon to the atmosphere, loss and degradation of forest have severe impacts on biological diversity and local living con