Open woodland, wooded grassland and degraded dry forest occupy a zone where more than one methodology could plausibly apply. The choice is not cosmetic — it determines which pools you measure, how the baseline is constructed, and how much of the work is soil science rather than forestry.
The Comparison That Matters
| REDD+ (avoided unplanned) | Savanna conversion | |
|---|---|---|
| Threat | Diffuse, many actors | Identified conversion decision |
| Baseline basis | Historical rate / jurisdictional allocation | Documented conversion plan and economics |
| Dominant carbon pool | Above-ground biomass | Soil organic carbon |
| Measurement burden | Forest inventory + change detection | Soil sampling at depth |
| Baseline contestability | High — the sector's weak point | Lower, if the conversion plan is genuine |
| Additionality difficulty | Moderate | Sharp — must show conversion was viable |
Note the trade running across the table: the methodology with the easier baseline has the harder measurement, and vice versa.
The Deciding Question Is Usually the Threat
Not the vegetation. What actually determines fit is what would have happened.
If clearing would have come from many small actors over time with no single decision behind it, that is unplanned deforestation and the REDD+ structure fits regardless of how open the canopy is.
If there is a specific party with a specific plan to convert the land to a specific use, the savanna-conversion structure fits, and the REDD+ historical-rate machinery is answering a question nobody asked.
Getting this backwards produces a project whose baseline analysis does not describe the threat it faces, which an assessor will notice quickly.
The Second Question Is Capability
Be honest about what the organisation can actually measure.
Savanna conversion requires competent soil carbon work: equivalent soil mass accounting, bulk density done properly, enough samples to beat high spatial variance. Teams without that capability should not choose a methodology whose dominant pool is soil, because the claim will not survive its own uncertainty.
REDD+ requires competent change detection with quantified classification accuracy, plus forest inventory. Different skill set, similarly unforgiving if absent.
Where Both Fit and You Must Choose
Occasionally both genuinely apply. Three tiebreakers, in order:
Which baseline can you evidence better? A documented, funded, scheduled conversion plan is stronger evidence than a historical rate. If you have one, use the methodology built around it.
Which pool holds your actual change? Follow the carbon rather than the label.
Which will still be defensible in ten years? Project-level REDD+ baselines have been the sector's most criticised area and are being absorbed into jurisdictional allocation. That is a reason to prefer the route whose baseline rests on documents rather than on a modelled counterfactual.
The Answer That Is Sometimes Correct
Neither. If the threat is diffuse and the soil work is beyond the team and no conversion plan exists to point at, the project is being assembled to fit a methodology rather than the other way round.
Projects built that way tend to fail at validation, after the money has been spent. Concluding early that the land does not currently support a defensible project is an unpopular finding and a considerably cheaper one.
Check the land before you commit
Eligibility turns on land history and forest cover at a cut-off date. TREEO Eligibility runs satellite-based forest cover detection on your area of interest, before a single seed goes into the ground.
