Forest carbon accounting

​​In cooperation with the Governor's Carbon Policy Office, ODF entered into an agreement with the The Forest In​ventory Analysis Program (FIA) to produce an Oregon Forest Ecosystem Carbon Report within the same forest carbon accounting framework used for the CA Forest Ecosystem Carbon Report. FIA will also produce a forest ecosystem carbon report for Washington, resulting in a consistent methodology for all three Pacific Coast states to report the storage and flux of carbon in forest ecosystems. 

The FIA Program, within the USDA Resource Monitoring and Assessment Division of the Forest Service, conducts an annual inventory of the nation’s forests with a 10-year remeasurement cycle for Oregon. FIA has developed a forest sector carbon accounting methodology that complies with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines for forest carbon accounting.​

ODF independently entered into an agreement with the FIA Program, in partnership with the Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER), to conduct an analysis on the dynamics of carbon in wood products. The Oregon Harvested Wood Products Carbon Inventory Report focuses on the history of timber harvest from Oregon's forests from 1906 to 2017 and tracks the storage and flux of carbon from those harvests through the pools of wood products and disposal. The methods for the analysis in this report are based on the IPCC, Tier 3, production accounting approach, adopted by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The report was revised to correct errors that appeared in the original version with explanations on page two.​

ODF independently entered into an agreement with the FIA Program, in partnership with the Bureau of Busin​ess and Economic Research (BBER), to conduct a separ​ate study of all on-site energy consumed and produced at sawmills in O​​​regon during 2017. The study was completed by BBER and the final report is available: Oregon Sawmill Energy Report 2017​.

​​This third component of the forest carbon accounting framework will be a forward-looking assessment of carbon stocks and will include an evaluation of the carbon outcomes from range of potential forest management and wood utilization scenarios. The USDA Forest Service Pacific ​Northwest Research Station’s carbon Research Initiative has identified a critical need for modeling the implications of alternative management approaches and policies on carbon sequestration and emissions from forest ecosystems, harvested wood products, and alternative energy choices. The work will be to identify one or more models that are, or can be, parameterized for the West Coast and that can evaluate the kinds of questions managers and policy-makers are posing.

The Station has funded a post-graduate (M.S. or Ph.D.) position to engage with stakeholders and refine their needs, and to critically examine the capabilities of different models to select a workable approach. The start date for the selected candidate will be October 2019. The selected participant will collaborate with staff in identifying the strengths, weaknesses, and data requirements of alternative simulation models of forest carbon, the models’ ability to address key questions identified by collaborating managers and policy-makers, and help formulate recommendations for a modeling framework that builds on the extensive carbon inventories in the region. The learning objectives for the project include: identifying key issues and trade-offs faced by managers and policy-makers in managing carbon stores on diverse forested landscapes, understanding the implicit goals and data requirements of alternative state-of-the-art forest ecosystem and forest product carbon models, and to gain experience in sharing this information internally among agency programs and externally among decision-makers, stakeholders and the public.​