Ghislain Moussavou

Industrial logging for timber production has long played a major economic role in the Congo Basin countries. Here, logging for timber production is carried out in two main ways: industrial exploitation, whose products are generally destined for overseas markets, and artisanal exploitation, which primarily supplies national and regional markets. In the Congo Basin, industrial logging takes place in forest concessions. The Congo Basin has 453 forest concessions for a total area of 52,875,107 ha. For the year 2022, the Congo Basin produced 7,960,323 m ³ of logs each year. The notion of sustainable forest management has taken root in the Congo Basin with two main variations: better involvement of local populations in forest management and sustainable management of forest concessions. Currently, it can be estimated that 70% of the forest concessions allocated are actually under management. Logging, whether in the context of concessions or artisanal logging, inevitably leads to several negative impacts on biodiversity, carbon stocks, water resources, and forest cover. These various impacts are expected to be mitigated already through the implementation of sustainable forest management and forest certification. The prospects for sustainable timber production from the Congo Basin are based on the following approaches: Make a more exhaustive assessment of the management of forest concessions Integrate artisanal logging into national forest management policies Work to create incentives for further wood processing Promote timber production from forest plantations

The Congo Basin forests are currently undervalued. Economic and social returns from forestry and timber processing are relatively low compared to some nations outside Africa. Furthermore, the ecosystem services provided by the forests, such as the net absorption and storage of atmospheric carbon, continue to be considered by the international community as a free commodity. We propose an economic model involving maximizing the proportion of third-level timber processing and planting new forests that can increase forest economies and job creation by an order of magnitude. We argue that only by making forests valuable to the people and nations of the Congo Basin will we be able to avoid the large-scale deforestation that has occurred in West Africa and in other tropical forest regions, where the economic and social benefits of conversion were higher than those linked to preservation and sustainable harvest. We discuss knowledge gaps that need to be filled, possible technological solutions and policy reforms, and fiscal incentives needed to implement our model across the Congo Basin.

The Congo Basin forests are currently undervalued. Economic and social returns from forestry and timber processing are relatively low compared to some nations outside Africa. Furthermore, the ecosystem services provided by the forests, such as the net absorption and storage of atmospheric carbon, continue to be considered by the international community as a free commodity. We propose an economic model involving maximizing the proportion of third-level timber processing and planting new forests that can increase forest economies and job creation by an order of magnitude. We argue that only by making forests valuable to the people and nations of the Congo Basin will we be able to avoid the large-scale deforestation that has occurred in West Africa and in other tropical forest regions, where the economic and social benefits of conversion were higher than those linked to preservation and sustainable harvest. We discuss knowledge gaps that need to be filled, possible technological solutions and policy reforms, and fiscal incentives needed to implement our model across the Congo Basin.

Industrial logging for timber production has long played a major economic role in the Congo Basin countries. Here, logging for timber production is carried out in two main ways: industrial exploitation, whose products are generally destined for overseas markets, and artisanal exploitation, which primarily supplies national and regional markets. In the Congo Basin, industrial logging takes place in forest concessions. The Congo Basin has 453 forest concessions for a total area of 52,875,107 ha. For the year 2022, the Congo Basin produced 7,960,323 m ³ of logs each year. The notion of sustainable forest management has taken root in the Congo Basin with two main variations: better involvement of local populations in forest management and sustainable management of forest concessions. Currently, it can be estimated that 70% of the forest concessions allocated are actually under management. Logging, whether in the context of concessions or artisanal logging, inevitably leads to several negative impacts on biodiversity, carbon stocks, water resources, and forest cover. These various impacts are expected to be mitigated already through the implementation of sustainable forest management and forest certification. The prospects for sustainable timber production from the Congo Basin are based on the following approaches: Make a more exhaustive assessment of the management of forest concessions Integrate artisanal logging into national forest management policies Work to create incentives for further wood processing Promote timber production from forest plantations

The Congo Basin forests are currently undervalued. Economic and social returns from forestry and timber processing are relatively low compared to some nations outside Africa. Furthermore, the ecosystem services provided by the forests, such as the net absorption and storage of atmospheric carbon, continue to be considered by the international community as a free commodity. We propose an economic model involving maximizing the proportion of third-level timber processing and planting new forests that can increase forest economies and job creation by an order of magnitude. We argue that only by making forests valuable to the people and nations of the Congo Basin will we be able to avoid the large-scale deforestation that has occurred in West Africa and in other tropical forest regions, where the economic and social benefits of conversion were higher than those linked to preservation and sustainable harvest. We discuss knowledge gaps that need to be filled, possible technological solutions and policy reforms, and fiscal incentives needed to implement our model across the Congo Basin.

We introduce a multiscale superpixel approach that leverages repeat-pass interferometric coherence and sparse AGB estimates from a simulated spaceborne lidar in order to extend the NISAR mission’s applicable range of aboveground biomass (AGB) in tropical forests. Airborne and spaceborne L-band radar and full-waveform airborne lidar data are used to simulate the NISAR and GEDI mission, respectively. In addition to UAVSAR data, we use spaceborne ALOS-2/PALSAR-2 imagery with 14-day temporal baseline, which is comparable to NISAR’s 12-day baseline. Our reference AGB maps are derived from the airborne LVIS data during the AfriSAR campaign for three sites (Mondah, Ogooue, and Lope). Each tropical site has mean AGB of at least 125 Mg/ha in addition to areas with AGB exceeding 700 Mg/ha. Spatially sampling from these LVIS-derived AGB reference maps, we approximate GEDI AGB estimates. To evaluate our methodology, we perform several different analyses. First, we partition each study site into low (≤100 Mg/ha) and high (>100 Mg/ha) AGB areas, in conformity with the NISAR mission requirement to provide AGB estimates for forests between 0 and 100 Mg/ha with a RMSE below 20 Mg/ha. In the low AGB areas, this RMSE requirement is satisfied in Lope and Mondah and it fell short of the requirement in Ogooue by less 3 Mg/ha with UAVSAR and 6 Mg/ha with PALSAR-2. We note that our maps have finer spatial resolution (50 m) than NISAR requires (1 hectare). In the high AGB areas, the normalized RMSE increases to 51% (i.e., <90 Mg/ha), but with negligible bias for all three sites. Second, we train a single model to estimate AGB across both high and low AGB regimes simultaneously and obtain a normalized RMSE that is <60% (or <100 Mg/ha). Lastly, we show the use of both (a) multiscale superpixels and (b) interferometric coherence significantly improves the accuracy of the AGB estimates. The InSAR coherence improved the RMSE by approximately 8% at Mondah with both sensors, lowering the RMSE from 59 Mg/ha to 47.4 Mg/h with UAVSAR and from 57.1 Mg/ha to 46 Mg/ha. This work illustrates one of the numerous synergistic relationships between the spaceborne lidars, such as GEDI, with L-band SAR, such as PALSAR-2 and NISAR, in order to produce robust regional AGB in high biomass tropical regions.