Forest Inventories: Discrepancies and Uncertainties

Paul E. Waggoner

RFF Working Paper Series from Resources for the Future

Abstract: Credits for sequestered carbon augment forests’ already considerable value as natural habitat and as producers of timber and biomass, making their accurate inventory more critical than ever before. This article examines discrepancies in inventories of forest attributes and their sources in four variables: area, timber volume per area, biomass per timber volume, and carbon concentration. Documented discrepancies range up to a multibillion-ton difference in the global stock of carbon in trees. Because the variables are multiplied together to estimate an attribute like carbon stock, more precise measurement of the most certain variable improves accuracy little, and a 10 percent error in biomass per timber levers a discrepancy as much as a mistake in millions of hectares. More precise measurements of, say, accessible stands cannot remedy inaccuracies from biased sampling of regional forests. The discrepancies and uncertainties documented here underscore the obligation to improve monitoring of global forests.

Keywords: forest monitoring; Forest Identity; forest carbon; remote sensing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q23 Q56 Q57 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-08-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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