Task force on Yasso model SC 12 Department of Forest Inventory JRC technical workshop on reporting LULUCF Arona Alexandra Freudenschuß

Specific contract 12 Framework contract for the provision of forest data and services in support to the European Forest Data Centre Reference: 2012/ S of 21/04/2012 within Task 3 of the LULUCF MRV project: Input to improving the comparability in MRV across EU MS

General objective Provide support to a limited number of Member States on modeling carbon stock change of forest mineral soils  The contractors have experience on modeling soil carbon stock changes of forest lands in the context of GHG inventories → → use Yasso07 in their UNFCCC/KP reporting

Specific tasks of SC 12 Presentations at JRC LULUCF workshop Set up of a forest soil modeling task force (TF) State of the art on forest soil modelling Preliminary model runs in the selected MS

TF on forest soil modeling Four contractors : Administration: IGN (FR) SC Biomass team: Metla (FN), WSL (CH), BFW (AT) Selected MS: EE, FR, RO, ES out of eight interested countries; criteria of selection: data availability, human and technical resources, geographical representation of EU countries, ecological gradient and actual reporting system

Work progress Contact established to all four MS Successful installation of Yasso07 and model runs with sample data Identification of suitable, country-specific data sets Data preparation and data enquiry First, preliminary model runs - Spain and France Active collaboration between contractors and MS (meetings, exchange)

YASSO – Input data Vegetation and Litterfall (time series of litter quantity, natural mortality, harvest) – preferable NFI data of several decades Litter quality (fractions of acid-, water-, ethanol and insoluble material) Weather data (mean annual temperature, precipitations and temperature amplitude)

National data sets EstoniaFranceRomaniaSpain Site selections Sample data102 sites across France 3 main regions3 regions - 5 plots per site for each tree species Tree species not specified yet mix of many different tree species Picea sp., Abies alba, Fagus sylvatica, Quercus sp. Pinus halpensis; Quercus ilex; Pinus sylvestris; Data sets - biomass not specified yet Level I plots – RENECOFOR sites with additional information on litter and deadwood since early 1990s National time series NFI data NFI 3: NFI 4:

Site selections Spain France Fig. 1: Location of RENECOFOR sites (Level I)Fig. 2: Location of the 3 provinces – Navarra (N), Murcia (SE), Madrid (central).

Preliminary results - Spain C-stocks at the 5 plots in Rascafria (Madrid region) Figures 2-7: SOM trend. Blue line: mean SOM (t/ha). Red Lines: 95% Confidence Intervals of the mean. [t/ha] [years]

Preliminary results - Spain Lack of information of the turnover of the leaves/needles for some Iberian species. Lack of knowledge of the turnover of the loss of coarse roots and branches. Lack of data on chemical quality for some tree species. NFI do not always registered forest management – identification of harvest and logging is often difficult Data are available from 2-3 comparable NFI cycles of 10 years. Longest available time period is 30 years.  Data gaps increase uncertainty of model results  Compared to field data Yasso07 results overestimate C-stock but the trend is similar.

Preliminary results - France Mean total C-stocks over 102 sites Figure: Mean total (soil and litter) C stock over 102 sites. [t/ha] [years] Current limitations/assumptions: -Spinup to initialise the Yasso runs and averaging inputs for simulation until observed values are available; -No uncertainty analysis to minimize run time; -Climate currently mean ; -C stock estimate lower compared to observation (ca. 70 t C/ha) but ok for a first estimate

Expected challenges Application of Yasso07 at sites with extended drought conditions Information on the decomposition of litter and deadwood into four chemical compounds may not be sufficient to apply Yasso at sites with highly mixed tree species.

Next steps Finalisation of data preparation: biomass and weather time series (esp. EE, RO) Set up and/or further improve Yasso07 model runs with country-specific data Exchange experience on Yasso07 application at sites with extended drought conditions (FR, ES) Draft final report ready in July 2014

YASSO Expert team Aleksi Lehtonen – Metla (FN) Markus Didion – WSL (CH) Robert Jandl – BFW (AT)