Moist tropical forests in Africa and elsewhere store large amounts of carbon and need accurate allometric regressions for their estimation. In Africa the absence of species-specific or mixed-species allometric equations has lead to broad use of pan moist tropical equations to estimate tree biomass. This lack of information has raised many discussions on the accuracy of these data, since equations were derived from biomass collected outside Africa.

Mixed-species regression equations with 71 sample trees using different input variables such as diameter, diameter and height, product of diameter and height, and wood density were developed to estimate total aboveground biomass and biomass of leaves and branches for a Cameroon forest. Our biomass data was added to 372 biomass data collected across different moist tropical forests in Asia and South America to develop new pan moist tropical allometric regressions. Species-specific and mixed-species height diameter regression models were also developed to estimate heights using 3833 trees.

Download poster summarizes allometric equations in Cameroon an pan allometric equations here