1. Burnt area reporting within EFFIS and LULUCF
LULUCF Reporting
32nd Meeting of the EC Expert Group on Forest Fires
Athens, 7/8 April 2014

2. Comparative analysis EFFIS vs LULUCF Biomass burning
Introduction
UNFCCC Reporting of GHG from Biomass burning
EFFIS Burnt area reporting
Comparison for Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and France
Potential for improvement

3. Introduction
Based on an internal report of the Forest Resources and Climate Unit – Comparative assessment of data reported under UNFCCC and EFFIS
Exploratory analysis of data
Objective of coherent reporting within countries for potential for improvements at country and EU levels

4. UNFCCC Reporting of GHG from Biomass burning
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol (KP) must submit annual inventories of national greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and removals including the Land use, Land use change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector
The LULUCF sector is divided in six main land uses: Forest land (FL), Cropland (CL), Grassland (GL), Wetlands (WL), Settlements (SL) and Other lands (OL). For each land use, countries should report carbon stock changes from main carbon pools and any other sources of GHG emissions (e.g. biomass burning)

5. EFFIS Burnt area reporting
Burnt area mapping in EFFIS:
Forest Fires Database – country reporting
Rapid Damage Assessment – satellite mapping estimation
Burnt areas the fire database:
Reported into Forest Area (BAFOR), Other Wooded Land (BAOW), Other Non-Wooded Natural Land (BAONW), Agriculture and other Artificial Land (BAAGR).
Total Burnt Area is the sum of the Forest Area, Other Wooded Land and Other Non-Wooded Natural Land.
Burnt areas in the Rapid Damage Assessment:
Classification follows the CORINE Land Cover Classes (up to level 3 – 44 classes).

6. Nomenclature
Specifically, figures on biomass burning used in this presentation are:
Official data reported by MS to UNFCCC, submission 2013, (hereinafter UNFCCC)
Annual official areas burned by forest fires reported by MS to EFFIS, (hereinafter EFFIS).
Data of burned areas (greater than approx. 30 ha) produced every year by EFFIS, as detected by MODIS satellite, (hereinafter MODIS)

7. Comparison for Spain
(all land uses)

8. Comparison for Portugal
(all land uses)

9. Comparison for Greece
(all land uses)

10. Comparison for Italy
(all land uses)

11. Comparison for France
(all land uses)

12. Potential for improvement
Large differences in many cases between burnt areas in UNFCCC reporting and EFFIS reporting, not easily explainable
In some countries, matching of burnt areas under UNFCCC and EFFIS, although EFFIS does not include agriculture
In some countries both estimations from EFFIS (database & MODIS) are well above UNFCCC reporting (even if MODIS data is expected to be smaller because small fires are not detected)
The above differences do not necessarily mean inconsistent reporting.
However, in these cases explanations of the likely reasons of the differences should be provided by the country.