Monitoring Forest Carbon Sequestration with Remote Sensing and Carbon Cycle Modeling

Abstract

Sources and sinks of carbon associated with forests depend strongly on the management regime and spatial patterns in potential productivity. Satellite remote sensing can provide spatially explicit information on land cover, standage class, and harvesting. Carbon-cycle process models coupled to regional climate databases can provide information on potential rates of production and related rates of decomposition. The integration of remote sensing and modeling thus produces spatially explicit information on carbon storage and flux. This integrated approach was employed to compare carbon flux for the period 1992-1997 over two 165-km2 areas in western Oregon. The Coast Range study area was predominately private land managed for timber production, whereas the West Cascades study area was predominantly public land that was less productive but experienced little harvesting in the 1990s. In the Coast Range area, 17% of the land base was harvested between 1991 and 2000. Much of the area was in relatively young, productive-age classes that simulations indicate are a carbon sink. Mean annual harvest removals from the Coast Range were greater than mean annual net ecosystem production. On the West Cascades study area, a relatively small proportion (< 1%) of the land was harvested and the area as a whole was accumulating carbon. The spatially and temporally explicit nature of this approach permits identification of mechanisms underlying land base carbon flux.

Estimating CO2 Sequestration by Forests in Oita Prefecture, Japan, by Combining LANDSAT ETM+ and ALOS Satellite Remote Sensing Data

“…Moreover, we also have to consider that forests are more diverse than just being natural or planted forests. Because both tree types and tree ages make differences in CO 2 sequestration [9,17,18], and for a more realistic estimation of the sequestration, we emphasize that forests have to be analyzed on a local or regional scale in order to get more precise and detailed classes for each forest category (tree type) as well as for each tree age range. Based on this detailed information about the forests, precise estimates of the forests sink capacity can be obtained.…”

Evaluation and comparison of gross primary production estimates for the Northern Great Plains grasslands

“…Models have been developed for estimating vegetation production at global and regional scales. These models combine CO 2 flux measurements at flux towers with satellite-based, remotely sensed observations, and range in complexity from "data-driven" empirical models to "process-based" biogeochemical models (Parton et al, 1993;Potter et al, 1993;Turner et al, 2004;Wylie et al, 2004;Xiao et al, 2004). Predictive models require evaluation of their performance in comparison with data sets from groundbased measurements (Amthor et al, 2001;Kramer et al, 2002;Veroustraete et al, 2002) and other model results (VEMAP Members, 1995).…”

Scaling net ecosystem production and net biome production over a heterogeneous region in the western United States

“…The primary NEP/NBP scaling tool in this analysis was the Biome-BGC model (Thornton et al, 2002) and details of its application for the purposes of scaling carbon pools and flux are given in previous publications Turner et al, 2004;Turner et al, 2003). Generally, we used model simulations to produce spatially-explicit estimates of carbon stocks as well as estimates of annual net primary production (NPP), heterotrophic respiration (R h ), and net ecosystem production for each year from 1980 to 2002 over the state of Oregon.…”