Alternative means for factoring out carbon uptake
CARBO-INVENT has identified, developed and tested means for assessing forest carbon (C ) stock changes at national and EU levels in order to report under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol (KP) via multi-source inventory methods. Some of these methods include, biomass expansion factors, soil C assessments along with forest inventories and remote sensing techniques to increase accuracy and decrease cost. The aim was to assist the design of "national systems" requested by the KP. Additionally methods/integration techniques have been used in boreal, continental, oceanic, alpine and Mediterranean test sites. At the national level, testing has been done for "full C accounting" as well as selective accounting under the KP. In an effort to translate KP decisions into inventorying requirements at the national/project levels, C monitoring/verification procedures have been suggested. Despite significant progress already accomplished in understanding the effects of the increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, there are still vast limitations in predicting the enormity of the effect. Therefore the individual factors that cause carbon uptake and release vary and cannot be identified and quantified. The best alternative method of approaching this problem seems to be through quantifying the change created by applying a specific management measure. One example of this would be by factoring out the direct human induced change. The idea was to compare set comparisons of stands treated in the "standard" way with stands treated with a changed management regime while experiencing the same environmental conditions. In the case of managed forests, simulation results indicated a shift from an inferior to a superior choice if substitution effects are factored in to the evaluation. Therefore, an evaluation of the entire set of policies and rules regarding wood use within the greater national concept for climate protection is necessary. Furthermore, the existing methodology needs to be incorporated in existing inventory schemes. A major problem is that the baseline cases against which effects need to be evaluated by monitoring are not yet fixed. Thus there is a continued attempt for answers within ongoing negotiations of Conference Of the Parties (COP) and alternative policy options.
