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Carbon and precursor gases emission from forest and non-forest land sources in West Africa

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Abstract

African forests make up a significant proportion of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from land-use change, deforestation, agriculture, and forest degradation due to increasing population, settlements, and growing food demand. This study provides detailed information and assesses the contributions of various vegetation classifications on emission estimates from the forest and non-forest lands in the West Africa sub-region between 1990 and 2019 using the inventory-based estimation approach. The savanna and grassland vegetations are the largest sources of estimated emissions with percentage contributions of 39.3% and 33.2%, respectively. The total GHG emissions estimates within the study period were 10.59 Pg for CO2; 19.23 Tg for CH4; 1.37 Tg for N2O; 0.46 Pg for CO and 23.53 Tg for NOX. West Africa is responsible for approximately a fourth of emissions from the northern hemisphere africa sub-region at an average annual emission of 350 Tg/yr. The regional net global warming potential (GWP) between 1990 and 2019 was estimated to be 11.44 Pg and Nigeria had the highest GWP at 18.7% followed closely by Mali and Ghana at 15% and 13.2%, respectively. We have provided detailed country-by-country estimates for important GHG species in various vegetation classifications of West Africa. The results from this study would help to improve GHG accounting from the forest and non-forest areas in West Africa and reduce uncertainties related to it.

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Abbreviations

barea:

Burned area

CS:

Closed Shrubland

defrate:

Deforestation rate

GL:

Grassland

HTF:

Humid tropical forest

OF:

Other forests

OS:

Open shrubland

pop:

Population

rain:

Rainfall

REDD:

Reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation

Sav:

Savanna

temp:

Temperature

wfem:

Wood fuel removal

WS:

Woody savanna

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank all who assisted in conducting this work.

Funding

Tertiary Education Trust Fund, DAPM/TETFUND/01/13,Khadijat Abdulkareem Abdulraheem

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

    K. A. Abdulraheem & A. S. Aremu

  2. Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria

    K. A. Abdulraheem

  3. Environmental Engineering Research Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria

    J. A. Adeniran

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  1. K. A. Abdulraheem
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Correspondence to J. A. Adeniran.

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Editorial responsibility: Mohamed F. Yassin.

Appendix

Appendix

Table

Table 7 Default value for the amount of fuel actually burnt (i.e. the product of MB and Cf)
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7 and

Table 8 Emission factors for various burning types. Source: IPPC (2006). IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use, Volume 4. Generic Methodologies Applicable to Multiple Land-Use Categories, Chapter 2
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8 of the IPCC 2006.

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Abdulraheem, K.A., Adeniran, J.A. & Aremu, A.S. Carbon and precursor gases emission from forest and non-forest land sources in West Africa. Int. J. Environ. Sci. Technol. 19, 12003–12018 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-022-04304-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-022-04304-7

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