Emil Cienciala, Erkki Tomppo, Arnor Snorrason, Mark Broadmeadow, Antoine Colin, Karsten Dunger, Zuzana Exnerova, Bruno Lasserre, Hans Petersson, Tibor Priwitzer, Gerardo Sanchez, Göran Ståhl. (2008). Preparing emission reporting from forests: use of National Forest Inventories in European countries. Silva Fennica vol. 42 no. 1 article id 265. https://doi.org/10.14214/sf.265

Keywords: forest carbon pools; greenhouse gas inventory; Kyoto Protocol; UNFCCC

Abstract | View details | Full text in PDF | Author Info

We examine the current status of greenhouse gas inventories of the sector Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF), in European countries, with specific focus on the utilization of National Forest Inventory (NFI) programs. LULUCF inventory is an integral part of the reporting obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol. The analysis is based on two questionnaires prepared by the COST Action E43 “Harmonisation of National Forest Inventories in Europe”, which were answered by greenhouse gas reporting experts in European countries. The following major conclusions can be drawn from the analysis: 1) definitions used to obtain carbon pool change estimates vary widely among countries and are not directly comparable 2) NFIs play a key role for LULUCF greenhouse gas estimation and reporting under UNFCCC, and provide the fundamental data needed for the estimation of carbon stock changes covering not only living biomass, but increasingly also deadwood, litter and soil compartments. The study highlights the effects of adopting different definitions for two major reporting processes, namely UNFCCC and FAO, and exemplifies the effect of different tree diameter thresholds on carbon stock change estimates for Finland. The results demonstrate that more effort is needed to harmonize forest inventory estimates for the purpose of making the estimates of forest carbon pool changes comparable. This effort should lead to a better utilization of the data from the European NFI programs and improve the European greenhouse gas reporting.

Cienciala, Institute of Forest Ecosystem Research (IFER), Areal 1. Jilovske a.s. 1544, 254 01 Jilove u Prahy, Czech Republic E-mail: emil.cienciala@ifer.cz
Tomppo, Metla, Finnish Forest Research Institute, Finland E-mail: et@nn.fi
Snorrason, Icelandic Forest Research, Iceland E-mail: as@nn.is
Broadmeadow, Forestry Commission, Forest Research Alice Holt Logdge, United Kingdom E-mail: mb@nn.uk
Colin, French National Forest Inventory, France E-mail: ac@nn.fr
Dunger, Federal Research Centre for Forestry and Forest Products, Institute of Forest Ecology and Forest Assessment, Germany E-mail: kd@nn.de
Exnerova, Institute of Forest Ecosystem Research, Czech Republic E-mail: ze@nn.cz
Lasserre, Department of Environment and Territory Sciences and Technologies, University of Molise, Italy E-mail: bl@nn.it
Petersson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Resource Management, Sweden E-mail: hp@nn.se
Priwitzer, National Forest Centre, Forest Research Institute. Slovak Republic E-mail: tb@nn.sk
Sanchez, Forest Health Unit, General Directorate for Biodiversity, Environmental Ministry, Spain E-mail: gs@nn.es
Ståhl, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Department of Forest Resource Management, Sweden E-mail: gs@nn.se

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