Carbon Budget Accounting At The Forest Management Unit Level

This report has been prepared in response to an identified need to provide guidance to forest managers seeking to report on a carbon budget at the scale of the forest management unit. Key concepts, tasks, and methods related to carbon budgeting are first reviewed, and a few points gleaned from research carried out in Canadian model forests are summarized. Carbon budgeting is then explained with reference to three distinct tasks: obtaining a baseline measurement of the amount of carbon in a particular forest at a given time; measuring the change to that stock over time; and evaluating the likely impact of various management activities on future changes to the carbon budget. Information needed in order to apply these steps is given, with a focus on how to use existing inventories to record carbon stocks & fluxes. The report concludes with a listing of some activities that could help to store carbon in forests.

"Forest carbon and how it changes over time provides an indicator of the sustainability of forest management. It is also a sign of sequestration or emission of carbon dioxide between forests and the atmosphere that can affect the mitigation of atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation and global climate change. To address the need for information on Ontario's forest carbon budget, a large-scale forest carbon modelling project was initiated. The background and objectives of this project are described in this report. Three complementary approaches are being used to estimate large-scale forest carbon storage in Ontario's forests: (1) the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBMCFS), (2) a modified version of FORCARB, which is the model developed by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service to estimate carbon in U.S. forests, and (3) direct estimation of forest biomass carbon using Ontario's growth and yield and forest resources inventory data (CAM, the Carbon Allometry Method)."--Docment.

Interactions between forests, climatic change and the Earths carbon cycle are complex and represent a challenge for forest managers they are integral to the sustainable management of forests. In this volume, a number of papers are presented that describe some of the complex relationships between climate, the global carbon cycle and forests. Research has demonstrated that these are closely connected, such that changes in one have an influence not only on the other two, but also on their linkages. Climatic change represents a considerable threat to forest management in the current static paradigm. However, carbon sequestration issues offer opportunities for new techniques and strategies, and those able to adapt their management to this changing situation are likely to benefit. Such changes are already underway in countries such as Australia and Costa Rica, but it will probably take much longer for the forestry sector in the Pacific Northwest region of North America (encompassing Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, British Columbia and Alaska) to change their current practices.

International Journal of Advanced Remote Sensing and GIS (IJARSG, ISSN 2320 – 0243) is an open-access peer-reviewed scholarly journal publishes original research papers, reviews, case study, case reports, and methodology articles in all aspects of Remote Sensing and GIS including associated fields. This Journal commits to working for quality and transparency in its publishing by following standard Publication Ethics and Policies.