Assessing carbon stock changes in European forests
One of the increasingly important issues as depicted by the Kyoto Protocol is the effective management of terrestrial carbon resources to minimise future global climate change. Focusing on this the CARBO_INVENT project used various multi-source inventory methods, including soil C assessments combined with forest inventories. More particularly, researchers examined in detail SOC data from typical large-scale soil inventories in six test countries. In order to verify and optimise the capability of this data to represent the related inventory, a quantitative approach was developed along with additional sampling for an area under study. Alternatively, researchers employed a model in another test area to derive SOC baseline values. Thereby, high-resolution soil C baseline maps were obtained for three test countries and a test area. For one of the test countries a regression technique was employed, while for the rest, regional estimates that were based on geo-matching/class matching were applied. Uncertainty related to regional differences was also taken into account and the plot level error sources involving SOC estimates were thoroughly reviewed. Hence, an objective, representative regional SOC inventory was developed to display the potential of current inventories to detect SOC changes from repeated sampling. This is expected to optimise decision-making using reliable and accurate information at national and/or European levels.