摘要：Reducing carbon emissions from deforestation and degradation in developing countries is of
central importance in efforts to combat climate change. Key scientific challenges must be
addressed to prevent any policy roadblocks. Foremost among the challenges is quantifying
nations' carbon emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, which requires
information on forest clearing and carbon storage. Here we review a range of
methods available to estimate national-level forest carbon stocks in developing
countries. While there are no practical methods to directly measure all forest carbon
stocks across a country, both ground-based and remote-sensing measurements of
forest attributes can be converted into estimates of national carbon stocks using
allometric relationships. Here we synthesize, map and update prominent forest
biomass carbon databases to create the first complete set of national-level forest
carbon stock estimates. These forest carbon estimates expand on the default values
recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's National Greenhouse
Gas Inventory Guidelines and provide a range of globally consistent estimates.
