Harmonized Methods for Assessing Carbon Sequestration in European Forests

The MASCAREF (Study under EEC 2152/2003 Forest Focus regulation on developing harmonized methods for assessing carbon sequestration in European forests) project was conducted by a consortium of 10 European institutions coordinated by IFER ¿ Institute of Forest Ecosystem Research, Czech Republic. The overall objective of this project was to contribute to the development of a monitoring scheme for carbon sequestration in forests of the European Union (EU). Specifically, the project aimed at i) strengthening and harmonizing the existing national systems to better meet the requirements of international monitoring and reporting of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions and sinks and ii) improving the comparability, transparency and accuracy of the GHG inventory reports of the Land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector of the EU Member States, as implemented in the EC Monitoring Mechanism. This project represents a step towards addressing the challenges of GHG inventories and the reporting under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto protocol related to forest land and forest activities. Reflecting the heterogeneity in land use, natural conditions and monitoring data availability, there is a wide variety in greenhouse gas reporting practices within the European Community, which becomes clearly apparent from an overview of the current GHG reporting practices prepared by MASCAREF. The particular tasks of the project were based on available data from regional, national and EU-wide projects and relevant activities that took place over the last decade. The project elaboration was conducted within several major tasks, followed by selected regional case-studies. Firstly, the currently available data and methodological approaches to estimate carbon stock and carbon stock change for emission inventories were analyzed. Secondly, the project conducted an analysis of ICP Forests health monitoring and Forest Focus programs. Similarly, it assessed the potential of utilizing data from the European National Forest Inventories for the purpose of emission inventory under UNFCCC and the Kyoto protocol. Related to this, the JRC AFOLUDATA website on biomass functions and conversion/expansion factors http://afoludata.jrc.ec.europa.eu/index.php/public_area/home) was complemented by adding new factors from the European member states. Also, the methodologies to aggregate the forest carbon stock data based on the National Forest Inventory plots to a 10x10 km grid were explored. Finally, several of the above tasks were elaborated and/or applied in case studies in the selected regions of Europe. The MASCAREF project fulfilled its main objectives and its results should facilitate a further development of monitoring schemes for carbon stock change assessment in forests of the European member states, hopefully leading to an improved GHG reportingJRC.DDG.H.2-Climate chang