Carbon Information Needed to Support Forest Management Bob Davis, Director Of Planning, Watershed And Air, USDA Forest Service 0

1  USDA Forest Service National Forest System 155 National Forests 20 Grasslands 193 Million Acres Research and Development 7 Research Stations 500 Scientists State and Private Forestry Technical and Financial Fire and Aviation Mgt. Forest Health Cooperative Forestry

The U.S. Forest Service

Carbon Policy Aspects  Climate Change Response Strategies  Mitigation/Sequestration  Adaptive Management/Resilience  Climate Change Performance Scorecard  Element 9 – Carbon stocks and flows.  National Forest Management Act 2012 Planning Rule:  Systems drivers, including climate change (219.6(b)(3))  Baseline assessment of carbon stocks (219.6(b)(4))  Carbon Off-Set Policies and potential future use in policy 4

Carbon Flow: Wildfire 5

Carbon Flow: Timber Management Timber Harvest Timber Stand Improvement 6

Carbon Flow: Prescribed Fire Prescribed FirePile Burning 7

Carbon Flow: Tree Planting 8

Assessing Carbon Need to Model Carbon Forest Carbon Management Framework (ForCaMF) The Integrated Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Model (InTEC) 9

Overall stocks may be estimated through forest inventory methods Courtesy: Chris Woodall, Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA) of the US Forest Service However, stock estimates give little insights into forest dynamics and how carbon storage might be managed

The Integrated Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon Model (InTEC)  We are using an ecosystem process model to augment the monitoring data from Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) inventories  InTEC allows the estimates from FIA to be partitioned into the main causes of observed trends:  Harvesting  Natural Disturbance  Climate  For application to U.S. National Forests, InTEC is closely calibrated to FIA standards

Examples of InTEC Results for Continental U.S. (Zhang et. al 2012) Top: Annual net biome production of U.S. forests (vegetation and soil) Bottom: Geographic distribution of annual net biome production from 2 main causes,

Downscaling with InTEC: Spatial and Temporal Change in Carbon Stocks, Northern Wisconsin and Chequamegon- Nicolet National Forest InTEC Model (Zhang et al. 2012)

The Forest Carbon Management Framework (ForCaMF) Tool for identifying the effects of management and natural disturbances on carbon storage in forests + Landsat-based maps of 1990 vegetation conditions and disturbance effects Calibrated with Forest Service records and inventories Forest Service Growth Simulator (FVS) Already used in the planning process Report for each National Forest about the local influence of disturbance versus growth Consistent with other Forest Service tools Calibrated for landscape- level planning units

Effects of management and disturbance may be identified for each National Forest 15 The Forest Carbon Management Framework (ForCaMF) Fire Emissions Harvest Emissions Extreme fire year Carbon Emitted (t/year) The combination of remote sensing, inventory, and Forest Service growth models allows locally meaningful but nationally repeatable insights into what affects forest carbon storage

Carbon Information Needed to Support Forest Management  Forest Service Climate Change Resource Center   2010 Resources Planning Act Assessment (Chapter 10)   Forest Inventory and Analysis 