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Land Use, Land-use Change and Forestry sector

Changes in the amount of carbon in vegetation and soil as a result of human activity are covered in the Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector. The sector also includes emission of nitrous oxide and methane resulting from land-use activity. In New Zealand, the LULUCF sector acts as a carbon sink. Removals in 2005 represent 24.5 Mt CO2-e or 32 per cent of national emissions. Overall, total LULUCF removals have increased by 29 per cent (19.0 Mt CO2-e) between 1990 and 2005.

SINKS

Any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Forests and other vegetation may be considered sinks because they remove carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.

Figure 10: LULUCF sector net removals: 1990–2005

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Within LULUCF, six land-use categories define all classes of land. These categories are forest land, cropland, grassland, wetlands, settlements, and other land. The categories are defined and required by international inventory guidance.

Transfers of land use from one category to another are associated with emissions or removals. Some categories of land staying in the same land use may be assumed to be in steady-state whereby they are neither gaining nor losing carbon – an example would be grassland. For other categories – such as growing plantation forests – the land use is not changing but forest growth removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it as carbon. Emissions can also arise from the burning and decay of biomass and changes in soil carbon.

The trends observed in the LULUCF sector reflect New Zealand’s changing land-use and forestry activity, particularly during the 1990s. In 2005, removals of greenhouse gases associated with forestry represent the majority of removals in the sector. The inventory reports emissions and removals from all forests not just “Kyoto forests” (or forests planted since 1990).

New Zealand has begun the implementation of a multi-year effort to substantially improve its estimates for the LULUCF sector. Ongoing improvement is a requirement of reporting under the Kyoto Protocol. The Land-Use and Carbon Analysis System (LUCAS) will use satellite and photographic imagery to determine changes in land use from 1990 and over the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (2008–2012). Current LULUCF estimates will be updated when areas of land use and land-use change are confirmed by the LUCAS work.