The US National Greenhouse Gas Inventory of Forests: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going Christopher W. Woodall with Domke, Smith, Coulston, Healey, Gray U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis St. Paul, MN

Outline  Context  Recent Science/Improvements  Near Term Deliverables  Long Term Plans

Courtesy of Perry et al. In Prep Atlas of US Forests Forest Carbon Cycle in Context of US Emissions

86%≈15% Why inventory?

That 15% Might Get Larger

Past, Current, and Future C

Inform Policy At Various Scales Vs. Biogenic emissions Post-2020 Emission Targets National Forest NEPA

Recent Enhancements of FIA’s Carbon Inventory  CRM adoption  Standing dead C estimation overhaul  Incorporation of P3 downed dead wood C  P2+ Inventories (i.e., greater sample intensity)  National utilization (i.e., life cycle analysis)  Dead wood residence time research  C density imputation (i.e., Wilson’s maps)

Differences in dead tree carbon Method CRM: CRM+DRF: CRM+DRF+SLA: 91.2 kg C 89.2 kg C 87.9 kg C 74.8 kg C 61.2 kg C 49.1 kg C Decay class 5 Decay class 1 Decay class 2 Decay class 3 Decay class kg C 19.6 kg C 12.1 kg C 2.4 kg C 1.7 kg C 1.0 kg C 0.4 kg C 0.3 kg C 0.2 kg C Harmon et al NRS-RP-15 Domke et al CBM Woodall et al Forestry

Downed Dead Wood Woodall et al FEM Domke et al PLoS One

Imputing Carbon Density to Landscape  Presented in 2014 NGHGI  3 rd Most Downloaded Research Dataset in FS: RDS  Most Accessed Article on Journal Website Wilson et al CBM

Modeling of Dead Wood Residency Woodall et al FEM; Russell et al Ecol. Model.; Russell et al Ecosystems

Climate and Dead Wood? Russell et al. In review

Near Term Deliverables  Carbon estimates from P2+/P3 Vegetation plots  New delineation of “managed” forest land in AK  Refined woodland vs forestland delineation  Forest floor C estimates from P3 data  Sources of stock estimation uncertainty

Understory vegetation  Includes seedlings, shrubs, grasses, and forbs  Formerly: Function of forest type and overstory size (based on Birdsey 1996), See EPA Annex 3.12  Cover and height by growth form “scales” estimates of maximum carbon Russell et al. In Revision Forestry

Adding AK Forest to NGHGI  Per IPCC guidance…only forest potentially impacted by humans included in inventory  AK forests along transport corridors or in mining/gas areas Ogle et al. In Prep

Woodlands vs Forest land  Beyond inventorying forests: woodlands and urban areas  Delineation based on maximum attainable height in situ (5m threshold)  ≈50 million acres Coulston et al. In Prep

Forest Floor Carbon  Primary Goal: Update Smith and Heath (2002) models used in FIADB and NGHGI using extensive P3 observations  Progress: Initial modeling complete…integrate updated models in 2015 NGHGI

Sources of Uncertainty  Objectives  Evaluate alternative estimation methods in DDW C  Quantify total uncertainty  Sources of Uncertainty  Measurement  Sampling  Model selection  Model parameter  Initial Results  Differences among methods may range up to 150% Oregon ( ) P2 plots = 4,859

Future Vision: Synergy Attribution Land Use Change Disaggregation Planned Improvements AK/HI Reduce uncertainty Alaska Land Use Change Forecasting Farm Bill: “Report information on renewable biomass supplies and carbon stocks at the local, State, regional, and national level, including by ownership type”

Increased Precision, Refined Data Distribution, and Application of RS/Biometrical Science  P2+ of Non-Live Tree Pools  Increased P2 Sample Intensity/Reduced Cycle Length  Continued Incorporation of Biomass/C Attributes into Online Tools  Consistent/Timely TPO/Utilization Information  Improved biometrics: forest floor, soils, understory vegetation, belowground  National Volume Biomass Study  Leverage Remote Sensing Technologies (e.g., ICE, LCMS)

Improving Change Detection and 1990-Present Baselines  NASA Grant: Carbon Monitoring Systems  National biomass mapping based on LiDAR and FIA network  Landsat change detection informs attribution of C to disturbance

Most Everything Feeds into Biomass/Carbon ICE LCMS National Vol/Biomass Study TPO/Utilization Interior AK Woodlands P2+/P3

Questions?