Forest Carbon Science and Reporting

Carbon Reporting

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 Criterion 5 indicators. 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 Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2020)
• 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, and urban trees in the United States, 1990-2021
• Greenhouse gas emissions and removals from forest land, woodlands, and urban trees in the United States, 1990-2020: 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 (2014) (update anticipated to be released in summer 2023)
• 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