Forest Inventory and Analysis National Program

Forest Carbon Science and Reporting

International Reporting | National Reporting | State Reporting | NFS Reporting | Entity-Level Reporting | Carbon Science | Related Content | Contacts

Carbon uptake and storage is one of many ecosystem services that forests provide. In the United States, forests and associated harvested wood products uptake the equivalent of more than 14 percent of economy-wide carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions each year and store more than three decades of CO2 emitted from fossil fuels. The FIA program has responsibilities for delivering policy-relevant reports, tools, and data on CO2 and other greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals from forest land as well as trees outside of forest (e.g., urban forests, grasslands) in the US. Principally, the FIA program is responsible for compiling estimates of GHG emissions and removals from forest land, harvested wood products, urban trees, and woodlands in the US each year as a component of the National Inventory Report that is submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The FIA program also develops and contributes GHG estimates to several local, state, and national reporting instruments such as the US Biennial Report, the US Resource Planning Act Assessments, and the Montreal Process Criteria and Indicators.

Land carbon science within the FIA program is targeted at improving the methods and models used to characterize carbon in the land sector and also to improve the spatial and temporal resolution of estimates of carbon stocks and changes to facilitate evaluation of existing land management policies and practices and to inform future activities. This work is done in collaboration with partners and stakeholders to enhance capacity and deliver relevant science, reports, and data.

This page provides an overview of forest carbon science and reporting in the FIA program along with links to research and reports.

FIA Carbon Reporting

The FIA program leads and contributes to several carbon reporting activities. This section provides recent examples of FIA contributions to international, national, state, and entity-level reports. Additional reports can be found in Treesearch.

International Reporting

The FIA program contributed database estimates, science, and expertise in these recently released international reports:

• 2019 Refinement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories
• Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020
• Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report (a Sustained Assessment Product of the U.S. Global Change Research Program)
• Integration of remote-sensing and ground-based observations for estimation of emissions and removals of greenhouse gases in forests

National Reporting

The FIA program leads and contributes to science and reporting on the economy-wide GHG emissions and removals as well as projections of future emissions and removals.

• Land Use, Land-Use Change, and Forestry (Chapter 6 of Inventory of US Greenhous Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2021)
• 2016 Second Biennial Report of the United States of America (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change)
• Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II: Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the U.S.

State Reporting

The FIA program leads and contributes to regular state level carbon reporting.

• Greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forest land, woodlands, urban trees, and harvested wood products in the United States, 1990-2021
• Greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forest land, woodlands, and urban trees in the United States, 1990-2021: Estimates and quantitative uncertainty for individual states, regional ownership groups, and National Forest System regions
• Coastal Alaska's forest resources, 2004-2013: Ten-year Forest Inventory and Analysis report
• Vermont Forests 2017

National Forest System Reporting

The FIA program leads and contributes to regular National Forest System carbon assessments.

• Assessment of the influence of disturbance, management activities, and environmental factors on carbon stocks of US national forests
• Carbon stocks and stock change on federal forest lands of the United States
• Estimates of carbon stored in harvested wood products from United States Forest Service Northern Region, 1906-2012

Entity-level reporting

The FIA program leads and contributes to regular entity-level carbon assessments.

• Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory
• Methods for calculating forest ecosystem and harvested carbon with standard estimates for forest types of the U.S.
• Forests of the Black Hills National Forest 2011

FIA Carbon Science

The FIA program leads and contributes to several lines of carbon science. Below are examples of some of the broad themes of carbon science research and development. Additional carbon science research reports and publications can be found in Treesearch.

Estimating carbon in forest ecosystem pools

The FIA program leads the development of methods and models used to characterize carbon in forest ecosystem pools. Many of these methods and models are used in reporting activities or to estimate carbon variables in the FIA database.

• Predicting downed woody material carbon stocks in forests of the conterminous United States
• Carbon fractions in the world's dead wood
• Toward inventory-based estimates of soil organic carbon in forests of the United States
• Estimating litter carbon stocks on forest land in the United States
• Estimating aboveground live understory vegetation carbon in the United States
• Improved accuracy of aboveground biomass and carbon estimates for live trees in forests of the eastern U.S.
• Consequences of alternative tree-level biomass estimation procedures on U.S. forest carbon stock estimates

Integrating remotely sensed information in carbon estimation

Many different approaches for data harmonization and fusion are being tested to improve the spatial and temporal resolution of forest ecosystem carbon stocks and changes.

• Contemporary forest carbon dynamics in the northern U.S. associated with land cover changes
• Land Use Changes, Disturbances, and Their Interactions on Future Forest Aboveground Biomass Dynamics in the Northern US
• Evaluating the influence of spatial resolution of Landsat predictors on the accuracy of biomass models for large-area estimation across the eastern USA
• Evaluating Site-Specific and Generic Spatial Models of Aboveground Forest Biomass Based on Landsat Time-Series and LiDAR Strip Samples in the Eastern USA
• Using matrix models to estimate aboveground forest biomass dynamics in the eastern USA through various combinations of LiDAR, Landsat, and forest inventory data

Assessments of uncertainty in carbon estimation

Identifying sources of uncertainty in estimates of carbon stocks and stock changes helps to inform investments to reduce uncertainty.

• Estimating uncertainty in the volume and carbon storage of downed coarse woody debris
• Quantifying allometric model uncertainty for plot-level live tree biomass stocks with a data-driven, hierarchical framework
• Accounting for density reduction and structural loss in standing dead trees: Implications for forest biomass and carbon stock estimates in the United States
• Hybrid estimators for mean aboveground carbon per unit area
• Comparisons of allometric and climate-derived estimates of tree coarse root carbon stocks in forests of the United States

Attribution of carbon flux in forest ecosystems

Attribution of carbon stock changes to human activities and natural processes informs policies and management strategies aimed at avoiding emissions or maintaining and enhancing carbon stocks and sequestration in forest ecosystems.

• Insect and Disease Disturbances Correlate With Reduced Carbon Sequestration in Forests of the Contiguous United States
• Changes in global terrestrial live biomass over the 21st century
• Modeling land use change and forest carbon stock changes in temperate forests in the United States
• Land use and management effects on soil carbon in U.S. Lake States, with emphasis on forestry, fire, and reforestation
• Over half of western United States' most abundant tree species in decline
• Land Use Changes, Disturbances, and Their Interactions on Future Forest Aboveground Biomass Dynamics in the Northern US
• Analyzing the impacts of forest disturbance on individual tree diameter increment across the US Lake States
• Impacts of Alternative Harvesting and Natural Disturbance Scenarios on Forest Biomass in the Superior National Forest, USA
• Attribution of net carbon change by disturbance type across forest lands of the conterminous United States
• Monitoring network confirms land use change is a substantial component of the forest carbon sink in the eastern US

Land representation

Land use and land cover classification and representation is foundational in estimating carbon stocks and stock changes within the land sector.

• Defining the United States land base: a technical document supporting the USDA Forest Service 2020 RPA assessment
• Delineating managed land for reporting national greenhouse gas emissions and removals to the United Nations framework convention on climate change
• Land Cover and Land-Use Change
• A Tale of Two Forest Carbon Assessments in the Eastern United States: Forest Use Versus Cover as a Metric of Change
• Using a remote sensing-based, percent tree cover map to enhance forest inventory estimation

Related Content

The FIA program leads and contribute to many other carbon science and reporting activities. Below are a few examples of recent carbon science activities. Additional carbon science research reports and publications can be found in Treesearch.

Tools for estimating forest carbon

• Advancing broad-scale forest health evaluation and monitoring with rFIA (Chapter 7 of Forest health monitoring: national status, trends, and analysis 2020)
• rFIA: An R package for estimation of forest attributes with the US Forest Inventory and Analysis database

Carbon in trees outside of forests

• Estimating carbon storage in windbreak trees on U.S. agricultural lands
• A model for estimating windbreak carbon within COMET-Farm™

Carbon in forest soils

• Soil Carbon (Chapter 2 of Forest and rangeland soils of the United States under changing conditions: A comprehensive science synthesis)
• Soil Organic Carbon Across Mexico and the Conterminous United States (1991-2010)
• The role of reforestation in carbon sequestration
• Spatial modeling of litter and soil carbon stocks on forest land in the conterminous United States
• A new era of digital soil mapping across forested landscapes [Chapter 14]

Contacts

For more information on Forest Carbon Science and Reporting within FIA, please contact Grant Domke