Zambia is one of the nine pilot countries in the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (UN-REDD) and is currently at the first phase of readiness for REDD+ under the UNREDD Quick Start initiative. A National Joint Programme (NJP), facilitated by the country’s Forestry Department is tasked with developing a National REDD+ Strategy (NRS). The road to the NRS includes preparing Zambian stakeholders and institutions, such as the Ministry of Lands, Natural Resources and Environment Protection (MLNREP), for coordinated implementation of REDD+. Outcome 5 of the NJP National Programme Document is...

A number of datasets are available for MRV of REDD+ in Zambia, generated from field inventories as well as remote sensing and aerial photography. They include ILUA I and II, aerial photographs, the USFS MRV report and satellite imagery from Landsat, RapidEye, MODIS, WorldView 1 and 2, GeoEye and Systeme Pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT). The data type, dates, cost, availability, potential uses and other characteristics are presented in Table 2.

The bulk of the Global Forest Resources Assessment (FRA) 2010 report, particularly for current trends, uses data from ILUA I. The FAO partially funded the ILUA and provided...

Growth rates both in mature and regrowth miombo woodlands are relatively low. Net primary production in miombo woodlands is 900–1600 gm^-2 per year and the annual increment of woody biomass is approximately 3–4% in mature stands (Frost 1996). Vinya et al. (2011) cites annual growth rates in ring width of 4.4–5.6 mm for regrowth and 2.3–4.8 mm for mature woodland in southern Africa. The average wood annual increment for all Zambian forests is 1.3–2.7 t per hectare per year (Siampale 2008). Table 4 provides a range of growth rate estimates, from 0.7 t to 1.4...

The deforestation rate in Zambia is likely to increase over the coming decade due to the growing population and a resultant increased demand for natural resources. A trend analysis by Vinya et al. (2011) indicated that forest cover loss would increase until 2020 and then decrease during 2020–2030; however, the baseline estimate and subsequent increase in deforestation rate for this analysis is very high (890,400 ha in 2000–2010, rising to 1,358,200 ha in 2020) considering the most recent estimates of the deforestation rate.

It was not possible to gather specific information regarding future activities that may cause forest...

As has been outlined earlier in this report, Zambia and the miombo ecoregion in general have a number of knowledge gaps in terms of scientific research relevant to MRV of REDD+. Bond et al. (2009) regard the limited data on deforestation, the high variability of miombo woodland vegetation and a poor understanding of the carbon cycle as key issues for estimating carbon supply in miombo region countries for REDD+. Stringer et al. (2012) list the following as knowledge gaps regarding carbon storage and sequestration in drylands in sub-Saharan Africa:

AGB: lack of observational data regarding present day AGB storage and...