ForCaMF - Decision Support for Landscape-Level Forest Carbon Management

Sean P Healey, USDA Forest Service, seanhealey@fs.fed.us (Presenter)
Shawn Urbanski, USDA Forest Service, surbanski@fs.fed.us
James Morrison, USDA Forest Service, jfmorrison@fs.fed.us
Chris Garrard, Utah State University, chris.garrard@usu.edu
Alicia Peduzzi, USDA Forest Service, apeduzzi@fs.fed.us
Alex J Hernandez, Utah State University, alex.j.hernandez@aggiemail.usu.edu

Forests have the capacity to store atmospheric carbon, and forest management is seen as a potential way to partially offset high anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. However, application of carbon cycle research in this area will depend upon development of new approaches for decision support which address, in a transparent way, the local ecological complexities facing managers without relying upon specialized monitoring campaigns. The Forest Carbon Management Framework (ForCaMF) has been developed to meet these needs. Forest carbon stocks and flows are modeled by applying carbon dynamics from a robust simulation tool (FVS: the Forest Vegetation Simulator) to high-resolution (30m) maps of forest structure and disturbance over the last 25 years. The defining feature of ForCaMF is that the maps used to represent landscape dynamics are modified in two ways: 1) stochastically, to simulate the potential effects of map bias and random error on flux estimates, and 2) purposively, to investigate effects of alternative disturbance scenarios.

An empirical measure of the uncertainty of carbon stock and flux estimates associated with each scenario is obtained from the variance of output estimates as inputs are iteratively varied to propagate potential input errors. The immediate and long-term carbon processes of real or hypothetical disturbances can be considered in the context of the larger matrix of undisturbed areas. This approach currently relies only upon inventory and satellite data which are uniformly available across the United States, and could be adapted to data available elsewhere. ForCaMF is being applied in the Northern region of the US National Forest System, which covers approximately 10 million hectares of forest over 5 states. Results are expected to support formal consideration of carbon storage as an environmental service in future regional forest planning efforts.

Presentation Type:  Poster

Session:  Science in Support of Decision Making   (Wed 10:00 AM)

Associated Project(s): 

• Healey, Sean: Installation of a Carbon Monitoring and Management Support Tool for the National Forest System ...details

Poster Location ID: 166