About

Forest land in Europe annually sequesters atmospheric carbon (C) comparable to the emissions from the agricultural or industrial process sectors. Despite its importance, the full potential of C sequestration on forest land in climate change mitigation strategies is not utilised. In large part, this is due to the high uncertainty of C stock change estimates of living biomass and forest mineral soil using current national-level methods. New estimation methods, which increase the spatial resolution of estimates by incorporating existing auxiliary data sources, are required to further mobilise the mitigation potential of forest land in Europe.

INVENT uses data from national forest inventory (NFI), forest harvest and spatially-explicit remote sensing to increase the precision and spatial resolution of living biomass estimates; and forest and soil inventory data, spatially explicit remote sensing data, and modelling procedures to increase the accuracy and spatial resolution of forest mineral soil C stock change estimates.

Enhanced methods are evaluated at the national and sub-national scales by their potential to document mitigation measures and in their effects in national greenhouse gas inventories. Different challenges in the partner countries are acknowledged and used as a platform for knowledge exchange.

Results

• The combined use of satellite mapping services and national forest inventory (NFI) data reduces the uncertainty of C stock change estimates. Further reductions of uncertainty are obtained by incorporating one-time lidar (or other 3D) data.
• Databases on tree litter production holds the potential to improve soil C model input.
• Elevation models with a resolution of 2 meters and finer can improve the accuracy and precision of carbon stock maps and the boundaries of soil classes (activity data), but depend on georeference precision of soil legacy data.