1. Introducing the New Forest Carbon Accounting Framework The FIA Carbon Accounting Team: Christopher Woodall, Grant Domke, John Coulston, Dave Wear, James Smith, Mike Nichols, Sean Healey, Andy Gray, Charles Perry And our partners across states, universities, and industry

2. What are The Mandates?  2014 Farm Bill  US Signatories to UNFCCC: Follow IPCC guidance  RPA: Reporting Biomass and Carbon  FAO FRA  Montreal Process C & I  Chief’s Climate Change Scorecard  President’s Climate Action Plan

3. Take Home Message  Growing Requests for Carbon/Biomass Information  Need for Consistent Estimates (consistent Storylines)  Expanding Set of Policy Questions  Greater Scrutiny  Demonstrate Continuous Improvement  Involve Full Breadth of FIA program (P3 and Pre-Field Land Use) Misha “The Hammer”

4. Improvements Paradigm  Use of in situ plots  Alignment of NGHGI with other Domestic/International reports  Incorporation of emerging science  Flexibility to address attribution and land use change

5. 2015 NGHGI  Submitted to EPA October 2014  Data from FIADB through Summer 2014  Currently in Public Review  Published mid-April 2015  Myriad of Improvements to Forest Sector Reporting

6. 2015: Forest floor (litter) C  Forest floor C measured on 4,500+ plots  Machine learning used to identify relevant variables  RF model developed using lat, long, AG live tree C, mean annual precip, max annual temp et al.  Error term representing the model uncertainty and observed variability around the prediction included in each estimate Domke, G.M., Walters, B.F., Perry, C.H., Woodall, C.W., Smith, J.E., Russell, M.R. In Review. Estimation of forest floor carbon using the national forest inventory of the United States. Intended outlet: Nature Scientific Reports.

7. 2015: Woodlands vs Forest land  Align definition of forests used in FAO FRA with US’ NGHGI  Ability to reach minimum height threshold (5 m) in situ  Transferred 29 million ha from Forest to Grassland land use (~4% reduction in C stocks) Coulston, JW, Woodall, CW, Domke, GM, Walters, BF. In Prep. Refined Delineation between Woodlands and Forests with Implications for US National Greenhouse Gas Inventory of Forests. Intended Outlet: Climatic Change.

8. 2015: Managed Lands (Alaska)  Per IPCC guidance only managed forests included in submission  Coterminous US forests all considered managed  “Managed” AK forests: impacted by settlements, along transport corridors, mining/gas areas, protected areas managed for recreation or suppression of disturbance Ogle, S.M., Woodall, C.W., Swan, A., Smith, J., Wirth. T. In Prep. Determining the Managed Land Base for Delineating Carbon Sources and Sinks in the United States. Intended Outlet: Environmental Science and Policy.

9. How About Managed Forest Land?

10. What Are We Missing in Interior AK?  How much managed forest?  46-49 million ha of forestland (~68% of interior forest)  How large of a carbon stock?  7,700 to 15,100 Tg C  Equivalent to 37% of total forest C stocks in coterminous US Genet et al. In Prep. Synthesis of the role of dynamic driving factors (climate, fire, permafrost dynamics, and forest management) on the historical and projected vegetation and soil organic carbon dynamics in upland ecosystems of Alaska. Intended outlet: Ecological Applications. McGuire et al. In Prep. A synthesis of terrestrial carbon balance of Alaska and projected changes in the 21st Century: Implications for climate policy and carbon management at local, regional, national, and international scales. Intended outlet: Ecological Applications. Saatchi et al. In Prep. Distribution of Carbon Stocks in Managed and Unmanaged Forests of Alaska. Intended outlet: Carbon Balance and Management.

11. Effects of 2015 Changes  Decrease in US forest C stocks by 6.8 percent to 40,202 Tg C  Decrease in the most recent US forest C annual sequestration (2015 NGHGI compared to 2014 NGHGI) by 9.6 percent to 197.1 Tg C/yr  Decrease in the 2005 baseline year forest C annual sequestration by 12.4 percent to 196.9 Tg C/yr

12. 2016 and Beyond: The Future  New accounting system for attribution and land use change  Improving pool estimation (in situ obs)

13. Old Accounting System  Best attempt to reconcile periodic inventories with annual inventories  Estimate carbon stocks at two times and substract (impute missing areas in periodics such as wilderness)  Lack of land use information in 1990’s complicated land use change assessment

14. New Accounting System Move annual inventory backwards and forwards in time

15. Components of New Framework  Land use change module  Uses pre-field FIA land use information  Stand dynamics module  Grows stands over short time steps through stand age matrix with associated changes in carbon densities by pool  Operates at regional scale and summarized at national level  Growth and land use dynamics parametrized at regional scales  Framework enables short term projections (~15 years to match US commitment periods), but also backcast ~10 years to meet UNFCCC guidelines

16. Leverage FIA’S Plot Network for LUC Analysis: Forest and Nonforest

17. Forests and Developments Gain from Loss of Agriculture Forest land use Agriculture land use Developed land use

18. ~37% of Eastern US Forest C Sink Strength is from LUC

19. Disentangle C Changes from Forest/Land Use Dynamics and Disturbance Coulston et al. 2015. Scientific Reports

20. Continue Incorporation of In Situ Observations (~2016 submission)  Soil organic carbon model from P3 data building F Floor model  Understory vegetation model from P3/P2+ data  Belowground model with climate coefficients  Foliage model from legacy data (nat’l vol/biomass study) Russell, M.B., et al. In Review. Climate-derived estimates of tree coarse root carbon in forests of the United States. Climatic Change Clough, B.J., et al. In Review. Comparing tree foliage biomass models fitted to a multi-species, felled-tree biomass dataset for the United States. Russell, M.B., et al. 2014 Quantifying understory vegetation in the US Lake States: a proposed framework to inform regional forest carbon stocks. Forestry

21. First Peak at New Baseline Coulston et al.

22. Timeline and Outputs  July 3 rd : Draft Forest Sector GHG Report  Sept. 15 th : Publish Forest Sector Report as FS Publication  October: Update and Submit Forest Sector Report to EPA  December: Forest Service GHG Report Informative to Paris COP

23. Final Thoughts  Growing Need for Carbon Information Means Maturing our Accounting Approach  Refine stock estimation by pool  Improve LUC, baselines, and attribution  Annual inventory system moved through time  Informs expanding set of Forest Policy Issues (e.g., Land Use Planning and Carbon Cycle)  Annual Forest Inventory Program is CenterPoint and Future of Terrestrial Carbon Accounting in US

24. Questions? cwoodall@fs.fed.us