Carbon stock measures the total amount of carbon stored in an area's ecosystems, expressed in tonnes of carbon per hectare (MgC/ha). This indicator tracks the temporal trend of storage, allowing assessment of whether an ecosystem is accumulating carbon (carbon sink) or releasing it (carbon source). It includes three components:
Trend monitoring is essential for verifying the effectiveness of reforestation and renaturalisation interventions. According to the Global Carbon Project (Friedlingstein et al., 2023), the terrestrial sink absorbs approximately 3.1 ± 0.6 Gt C/year, but this capacity is vulnerable to climate and land use changes.
Carbon stock is estimated using a multi-temporal approach:
Unit: MgC/ha (tonnes of carbon per hectare)
| Code | Name | Provider | Resolution | Availability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
WRD_CARBN_99 | Global Potential Carbon | Harvard Dataverse | 30 m | 2016 |
WRD_GDYXX_99 | Google Dynamic World | 10 m | continuous | |
WRD_S2XXX_99 | ESA Sentinel-2 L2A | ESA/Copernicus | 10 m | 2017 — present |
| Indicator | Unit | Range | Inverted |
|---|---|---|---|
carbon_stock_current_total | MgC/ha | [0, 40, 100, 175, 255, 300] | No |
carbon_stock_unrealized_potential_total | MgC/ha | [0, 8, 40, 100, 165, 200] | No |
carbon_stock_future_unrealized_potential | MgC/ha | [0, 6, 30, 75, 125, 150] | No |
carbon_stock_future_unrealized_potential_change | % | [-100, -50, -10, 10, 50, 100] | No |
Inverted = No: a higher value indicates better conditions.
| Level | Total Stock (MgC/ha) | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| E (Critical) | 0 – 40 | Artificial areas, bare soil or heavily degraded |
| D (Low) | 40 – 100 | Grasslands, crops, intensive agricultural areas |
| C (Moderate) | 100 – 175 | Semi-natural areas, shrublands, extensive crops |
| B (Good) | 175 – 255 | Temperate forests, well-preserved natural ecosystems |
| A (Excellent) | > 255 | Mature forests, high carbon storage ecosystems |
carbon_stock_current_total
(MgC/ha)carbon_stock_unrealized_potential_total
(MgC/ha)carbon_stock_future_unrealized_potential
(MgC/ha)carbon_stock_future_unrealized_potential_change
(%)Carbon stock estimated in ecosystems via multi-temporal approach. For 2016: data from the Global Potential Carbon dataset (Harvard Dataverse, 30 m). For subsequent years: ML model (Random Forest) trained on 2016 data using Land Cover from Google Dynamic World and NDVI from Sentinel-2 as features. Includes current stock, unrealised potential, and future projection. Unit: MgC/ha.