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Carbon analysis web pages go live
Accurately measuring the ability of New Zealand’s plants to absorb carbon dioxide from the air and store it as carbon (carbon sinks) is part of New Zealand’s international climate change obligations.
An inventory of New Zealand’s stored
carbon in the environment is almost
complete. The red spots show the
areas that had been recorded up
until February 2008.
Last month, new Ministry web pages were launched to help people get a better understanding of how the Ministry has approached and is continuing to approach the task of meeting New Zealand's Kyoto Protocol reporting requirements.
To meet its Kyoto reporting requirements, the Government established a national greenhouse gas inventory which records greenhouse gas emissions and removals. The Ministry was appointed to regularly submit the inventory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Project Director Carbon Monitoring Steve Botica, from the Ministry, says the web pages will help people understand how the fluctuating amount of carbon in the New Zealand environment associated with land use and land-use change in New Zealand is measured.
“Under its international obligations, New Zealand is required to report on greenhouse gas emissions and removals arising from land use and land-use change. To do this the Ministry had to establish a measuring system that is internationally accepted,” said Botica.
“We have designed a system known as the New Zealand Land Use and Carbon Analysis System (LUCAS), to allow New Zealand to claim credits for its carbon sinks and account for the carbon changes associated with land-use changes.”
Botica says the Ministry has been collecting data and developing a database on carbon change since 2002. Information will be added into the database each year up until 2012 (the last year of the five-year first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol).
“The web pages will feature information about reporting requirements, structure of the LUCAS project, system design, land-use mapping, forest and soil carbon inventory and international reporting.”
An important feature of LUCAS is that it will provide robust background information for New Zealand’s future climate change policy development and international climate change agreements.
The web pages also provide a special glossary of terms to help users understand some of the scientific reporting and accounting terminology. For those who want to see what other countries or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are doing in the field of carbon accounting there is a series of links to their progress and policies.
For more information see the carbon analysis web pages at: www.mfe.govt.nz/issues/climate/lucas/ or email lucas@mfe.govt.nz.
