Integrating Landscape-scale Forest Measurements with Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Models to Improve Carbon Management Decisions
Craig
A
Wayson, U.S. Forest Service, cwayson@fs.fed.us
(Presenting)
Richard
Birdsey, U.S. Forest Service, rbirdsey@fs.fed.us
David
Hollinger, U.S. Forest Service, dhollinger@fs.fed.us
John
Bradford, U.S. Forest Service, jbbradford@fs.fed.us
Michael
Ryan, U.S. Forest Service, mgryan@fs.fed.us
Steven
McNulty, U.S. Forest Service, steve_mcnulty@ncsu.edu
Randall
Kolka, U.S. Forest Service, rkolka@fs.fed.us
Chris
Potter, NASA - Ames, chris.potter@nasa.gov
John
Hom, U.S. Forest Service, jhom@fs.fed.us
Yude
Pan, U.S. Forest Service, yudepan@princeton.edu
Kenneth
Clark, U.S. Forest Service, kennethclark@fs.fed.us
Steven
Klooster, University of California, sklooster@gaia.arc.nasa.gov
Managing forests to increase carbon stocks to offset emissions requires knowledge of how management practices and natural disturbances can affect carbon pools over time, and cost-effective techniques for monitoring and reporting. This study improves upon the methodology to collect and integrate the multi-tier monitoring data from the North American Carbon Program (NACP) with management decisions by systematically scaling up intensive forest carbon measurements to land management areas (or landscapes), and reconciling these estimates with ecosystem models and decision-support systems that are driven by remote sensing and national inventories. We use spatial analysis techniques and ecosystem process models (e.g. PnET-CN) to scale up and map observations from flux towers, landscape biometrics, and inventories to areas of approximately 2500 km2 around flux tower sites. We are working on quantifying uncertainty for these estimates and comparing them with estimates for the same regions that are based on remote sensing (e.g. NASA-CASA). We compare and reconcile the top-down and bottom-up approaches, then use the mapped estimates of productivity and biomass that embed consequences of land disturbances and forest age structure as input to decision-support tools. Key information for the decision-support tools includes estimating (1) carbon stocks and quantified impacts of management activity; (2) net ecosystem production (NEP) and changes in carbon pools; and (3) forest/atmosphere carbon fluxes and the impact environmental drivers on them. This work is relevant to land managers and climate change policy because it supports a need to estimate and report carbon stocks and changes in carbon stocks to state, regional, national, and private greenhouse gas registries. This work builds upon a foundation of work begun in 2001 by the U.S. Forest Service to implement a forest carbon monitoring and observation system at intermediate or “Tier 3” sites as described in the North American Carbon Program (NACP) science plan.
Presentation Type: Poster
Poster Session: Carbon Cycle Science
NASA TE Funded Awards Represented:
NONE: Related Activity or Previously Funded TE Award