Carbon sequestration in harvested wood products.

Abstract

This section quantifies the net changes in C stocks in the five forest C pools and two harvested wood pools. The net change in stocks for each pool is estimated, and then the changes in stocks are summed over all pools to estimate total net flux. The focus on C implies that all C-based greenhouse gases are included, and the focus on stock change suggests that specific ecosystem fluxes do not need to be separately itemized in this report. Disturbances from forest fires and pest outbreaks are implicitly included in the net changes. For instance, an inventory conducted after fire counts only the trees that are left. The change between inventories thus accounts for the C changes due to fires; however, it may not be possible to attribute the changes to the disturbance specifically. The IPCC (2003) recommends reporting C stocks according to several land-use types and conversions, specifically Forest Land Remaining Forest Land and Land Converted to Forest Land. Currently, consistent datasets are just becoming available for the conterminous United States to allow forest land conversions and forest land remaining forest land to be identified, and research is ongoing to properly use that information based on research results. Thus, net changes in all forest-related land, including non-forest land converted to forest and forests converted to non-forest, are reported here.

Citation

Skog, K. 2011. Carbon sequestration in harvested wood products. In: Inventory of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and sinks: 1990-2009: Chapter 7. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2011: p. 7-12 to 7-20, A254-A278; EPA 430-R-11-005.