Application and Development of Appropriate Tools and Technologies for Cost-Effective Carbon Sequestration

Abstract

The Nature Conservancy is participating in a Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) to explore the compatibility of carbon sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems and the conservation of biodiversity. The title of the research project is "Application and Development of Appropriate Tools and Technologies for Cost-Effective Carbon Sequestration".The objectives of the project are to: 1) improve carbon offset estimates produced in both the planning and implementation phases of projects; 2) build valid and standardized approaches to estimate project carbon benefits at a reasonable cost; and 3) lay the groundwork for implementing cost-effective projects, providing new testing ground for biodiversity protection and restoration projects that store additional atmospheric carbon. This Technical Progress Report discusses preliminary results of the six specific tasks that The Nature Conservancy is undertaking to answer research needs while facilitating the development of real projects with measurable greenhouse gas reductions. The research described in this report occurred between January 1 st and March 31 st 2006. The specific tasks discussed include:• EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe Nature Conservancy, partners and collaborators had another productive quarter conducting research under this cooperative agreement.Inventory and remote sensing work for carbon analysis has continued in California in the North Yuba area. The University of California team used likelihood analysis and Akaike's Information Criterion to fit allometric equations of biomass vs. height and biomass vs. crown diameter for the calculation of biomass from LIDAR and QuickBird data. The team from Carnegie Institution of Washington and Stanford University has also now used an automatic crown detection algorithm on the North Yuba Quickbird data.The Nature Conservancy hosted a very successful Technical Advisory Panel meeting with 35 participants. Excellent presentations were delivered and discussion sessions convened on both project and national level approaches to measuring and monitoring carbon stocks. Expert speakers presented on the results of research sponsored by this co-operative agreement, whilst others were brought in to talk on other leading research initiative underway in the field of monitoring and measuring carbon stocks in the land-use and forestry sector.Considerable progress has been made on the Northeast feasibility study. Parts 1 and 2 of this study were submitted to John Litynski as milestone reports. Substantial analysis has already taken place for parts 3 and 4, which look at the opportunities for improving carbon storage and management on agricultural and forest lands. 6 EXPERIMENTAL Task 1 Carbon Inventory AdvancementsCarbon Inventories can be increased and costs lowered through improved techniques. Forest Inventories have been carried out for a number of reasons; to use for M3DADI calibration (task 2), for use in carbon baseline development (task 3) and for development of new...