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1. Executive Summary

This report chronicles the development of the carbon monitoring system (CMS) for indigenous forests, scrub and soils. Indigenous forests, scrub, and soils represent large terrestrial carbon reservoirs subject to impact from anthropogenic causes such as land-use change that can alter the level of carbon in the soil, change in forest condition such as die back from pest damage, or scrub regeneration from abandoned farmland. Monitoring these changes is important to meet international obligations and to understand the critical mitigation options for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

At present it is uncertain whether New Zealand is losing or gaining carbon from these reservoirs, but their good management could assist in phasing the reduction of greenhouse gas production in industry and transport by providing an interim net offset.

As 1990 has been set as the reference year from which carbon changes should be measured, calculating a baseline from that date is an essential aspect of the system.  A system that monitors carbon as a requirement also monitors other aspects of soil and forest health. Hence from the outset the development of the CMS considered some of the broader monitoring requirements involved in managing soils and indigenous forests.

However, before possible extensions of the CMS were considered, the basic requirements in relation to carbon measurements had to be met.  This meant that the CMS had to:

  • provide unbiased (accurate) carbon estimates

  • provide estimates within reasonable bounds of error and estimate those bounds (confidence intervals)

  • monitor the unexpected and unpredictable

  • be capable of measurement over the long term (40–50 years)

  • be robust to change over the long term

  • provide a basis and data for future, unknown requirements

  • be capable of partitioning results into subdivisions whose definitions are currently unknown

  • be consistent with other developed countries

  • withstand international scrutiny.

    The soils, scrub and indigenous forests monitoring systems followed different development routes that reflected the historical information researchers brought to their development, the current level of available technology to supplement on the ground measurements, and the ancillary requirements for other monitoring systems. Where possible, the two systems sought to work together to maximise efficiency but, in general, their development occurred in parallel. A third component of the CMS development was the consideration of an information system to manage and report on the data. While considerable thought has been given to the system, the user requirements are not currently sufficiently well defined to finalise the system. This definition is not scheduled to occur until the second year of implementation.

    A key requirement of the CMS will be a regularly updated Land Cover Database. The intention is that this will be provided from remotely sensed imagery, supplemented with other information. On-going research should also be available to make improvements to monitoring methodologies and to provide an independent audit on the carbon estimates.

    During the CMS development an international review of the system was held in time for the key recommendations of the review to be undertaken before the development phase was concluded.

 

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