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ACCOUNTING FOR BIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC FACTORS IN NATIONAL LAND-BASED CARBON BUDGETS
Citation:
Turner, D. P., J. K. Winjum, T. P. Kolchugina, AND M. Cairns. ACCOUNTING FOR BIOLOGICAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC FACTORS IN NATIONAL LAND-BASED CARBON BUDGETS. Ambio 26(4):220-226, (1997).
Description:
Efforts to quantify net greenhouse gas emissions at the national scale, as required by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, must include both industrial emissions and the net flux associated with the land base. In this study, data on current land use, rates of land-cover change, forest harvest levels, and wildlife extent were analyzed under a common framework for three countries in order to compare net CO-2 carbon flux, and to identify key research areas. In the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and the conterminous United States (US), the stand age-class distribution on the forested land and the rate of logging tended to be the most important factors in the land-base flux, whereas in Brazil the rate of land-cover change and the vegetation regrowth in secondary forests on abandoned agricultural or grazing land were critical. The areas of greatest uncertainty for the FSU and US analyses related to the rates of woody debris and soil organic matter accumulation and to limitations in the age-class based inventory data available. In Brazil, the initial biomass in forests subject to deforestation, and the area of recovering secondary forest, were identified as important research issues. Continued database development, and close attention to methodologies for quantifying carbon flux, will be necessary if carbon budget assessments are to be of use to the policy community.