CForRep

The aim of the CForRep project is to improve the accuracy and precision of Irish forest carbon reporting. In order to continue the development of the Irish national forest GHG reporting system (CARBWARE), the CoFoRD funded CForRep project seeks to make improvements to three inventory areas:

1. refinement of a spatially explicit soil carbon reporting framework (Workpackage 1);
2. development of a system to track aerial changes associated with deforestation and disturbance (Workpackage 2); and
3. improved characterisation of changes in forest carbon stocks associated with disturbance and management interventions (Workpackage 3).

This multidisciplinary collaboration between several national institutions will focus on:

• applying improved estimates of CO₂ emission factors to afforested organic soils and organo-mineral soils;
• refining the modelling of soil carbon stocks and changes in mineral soils using a spatial framework;
• detecting deforestation and disturbance events from medium resolution hypertemporal optical satellite imagery and characterising them using higher spatial resolution optical and microwave images;
• developing methodologies to investigate the fate and management of forest deadwood carbon pools after disturbance events; and
• constructing algorithms to quantify changes to deadwood carbon.

The combined outputs from these research activities will be assimilated into CARBWARE (Workpackage 4), thereby improving the national reporting capacity and accuracy. Close collaboration with the Irish GHG network will ensure standardisation of outputs, with delivery of geodatabases derived from the research to support DAFM and Forest Service forest management.

The following figure illustrates the distribution of effort between Workpackages, and well as the flow of information within and beyond the project.