1. 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

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

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

4. 86%≈15% Why inventory?

5. That 15% Might Get Larger

6. Past, Current, and Future C

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

8. 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)

9. 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 4 29.4 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. 2011 NRS-RP-15 Domke et al. 2011 CBM Woodall et al. 2012 Forestry

10. Downed Dead Wood Woodall et al. 2013 FEM Domke et al. 2013 PLoS One

11. Imputing Carbon Density to Landscape  Presented in 2014 NGHGI  3 rd Most Downloaded Research Dataset in FS: RDS-2013-0004  Most Accessed Article on Journal Website Wilson et al. 2013. CBM

12. Modeling of Dead Wood Residency Woodall et al. 2012 FEM; Russell et al. 2013. Ecol. Model.; Russell et al. 2014. Ecosystems

13. Climate and Dead Wood? Russell et al. In review

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. 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

19. 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 (2001-2010) P2 plots = 4,859

20. 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”

21. 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)

22. 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

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

24. Questions?