Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
(GPG-LULUCF) sector (IPCC
2003
). This chapter explores this topic focusing on
a specific methodological question: how to integrate land use and forest inventory
approaches in the estimate of CO
2
emissions and removals in managed forest eco-
systems. The forest carbon accounting system here outlined rests upon two main
technical issues arising from the reporting requirements of the Kyoto Protocol for
the activities elected by Italy under Article 3.3 (Afforestation/Reforestation and
Deforestation—AF/R and D) and 3.4 (Forest Management—FM):
• to provide estimates of the lands that since 1990 are subject to elected LULUCF
activities, by geographical units delineated at country level (e.g. administrative
units); the system should be able to assign lands to a single activity for each
year of the first commitment period 2008-2012;
• to estimate the annual lux of CO
2
to or from the atmosphere on all areas
subject to LULUCF activities as identified above; the annual flux of CO
2
is
assumed to be equal to annual changes in carbon stocks in biomass and soils
carbon pools (IPCC
2003
).
The data and information available to a country in order to meet these information
needs will largely depend on national circumstances. National Forest Inventories
(NFIs) are important data sources, even though not always adequate to meet all
the reporting requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. Traditionally, NFIs have been
conceived to provide continuously updated information regarding the state of a
given country's forest resources, including stock and changes in tree stem volume.
But only recently, with increasingly demanding international reporting needs,
the question of how NFIs can accurately respond to these new requirements has
received specific attention (Corona and Marchetti
2007
; Vidal et al.
2008
; Tomppo
et al.
2010
; Corona et al.
2011
).
It is
good practice
to use methods providing the highest levels of certainty,
while using available resources at country level as efficiently as possible (IPCC
2003
). In this perspective, the Italian Ministry of Environment, Land and Sea
has chosen an inventory-based approach to set up the National Registry for for-
est carbon sinks. The Registry is part of the national system for the Italian GHG
inventory, which includes all institutional, legal and procedural arrangements for
accounting anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of GHGs
under the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
and its Kyoto Protocol. As forest management is a key activity for the first com-
mitment period in Italy, the last Italian national forest inventory has been designed
to assess the state of carbon stocks in forest land, so that to be named
National
Inventory of Forests and forest Carbon pools
—INFC (Gasparini et al.
2010
, also
refer to
http://www.sian.it/inventarioforestale/jsp/home_en.jsp
). In consistency
with this goal, the INFC adopts a three-phase sampling design for the stratification
of the forest land population. The first two phases allow estimating forest area—
according to the forest definition selected by Italy under the Kyoto Protocol, i.e.
as provided by the Forest Resources Assessment by FAO—and its partition into
land use inventory categories and forest types. The third phase provides estimates
of carbon stock for all forest carbon pools (living biomass, dead organic matter
