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Kyoto Forests (forests that are planted after 1990 into non-forest land)

The primary objective of this workstream is to determine forest carbon per unit area in forests planted since 1990. It is estimated that in excess of 600,000 hectares of new forest has been established since 1990. This is about 2 per cent of New Zealand’s land area.

Approach

A 4km by 4km grid has been overlaid across New Zealand. This 4km by 4km kilometre grid is coincident with the 8 km by 8 km sampling grid used for Natural Forests and proposed to be used for sampling forests planted prior to 1990. Where grid intersects land on Kyoto Forest a permanent forest monitoring plot will be installed and measured at regular intervals. Approximately 400 sample plots are expected to be established within Kyoto Forests.

As will be the case for forest planted before 1990, each plot consists of four circular sub-plots. In each sub-plot, the intention is to measure the diameter of all trees, the heights and tree crown dimensions of up to 16 trees are measured. In addition to these standard forest inventory measurements, soil samples are taken, the health of the trees are assessed, coarse wood and fine woody debris are sampled and the understory plants are assessed.

Field methods were developed over the period 2004 and 2005 and a field manual written. A data capture program has also been developed so field measurements can be directly captured on hand-held computers in the field.

Alternative methods using airborne sensors such as a scanning laser (LiDAR) are being used to measure forests as they will provide valuable data and improve field sampling efficiency.

Requirement

A robust forest sampling system including, statistical design, data collection, measurement protocols and quality control procedures to ensure representative and statistically robust estimates of total carbon stocks and changes in carbon stocks can be calculated for Kyoto forests on a national scale.

Timing

It was originally planned to install and measure 400 plots over the three-year period from 2005 to 2007 and then re-measured them twice (2008-10 and 2011-2013) in time for New Zealand to finalise its Kyoto Protocol Commitment Period 1 (CP1) reporting in 2014. Forest access issues prevented the installation of plots in 2005 and 2006.

It is now likely that only two measurements cycles will be possible and that depending of field access LiDAR and high resolution aerial photograph may be used where field plots are unable to be measured.

Last updated: 12 November 2008