Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks for Managed Forest Systems

The USDA provides methods for estimating emissions and sequestration for forest management activities within the Managed Forests chapter of the Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory.

The Managed Forests Systems chapter of the USDA’s Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory report methods for estimating emissions or carbon removal related to forest management activities. These guidelines provide a standard set of methodological approaches and data sources for quantifying greenhouse gas flux from land management activities at the private landowner scale.

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  Webinar: Entity-Scale Methods Report (2nd Edition) - Managed Forest Systems

  In this webinar, Lara Murray and Chris Woodall, the USDA Forest Service lead authors of the Managed Forest System chapter provide information on the quantification methods included in the new report, how they’ve changed since the 2014 report, and insight into the new forest carbon accounting tool the team created that helps guide less experienced users through the process of quantifying forest-stand level carbon fluxes. Dr. Catherine Henry, a special guest from the Forest Service Office of Sustainability and Climate, provides insight into how the USFS plans to use the newly developed forest carbon accounting tool for National Forest Service project planning.

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  Chapter 5: Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Sources and Sinks for Managed Forest Systems

  This chapter describes methods for estimating emissions or carbon removal from silvicultural practices and improved forest management, carbon storage and emissions and life cycle assessment (LCA)-quantified substitution impacts from harvested wood products (HWPs), emissions from wildfire and prescribed fire, and greenhouse gas flux from urban forest management.

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  Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory

  The second edition of Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory is USDA's continued response to Section 2709 of the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, which directed USDA to "establish technical guidelines that outline science-based methods to measure the environmental service benefits from conservation and land management activities in order to facilitate the participation of farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners in emerging environmental services markets."

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Summary of Workshop

USDA Forest Service Research & Development, the Society of American Forests, and the USDA Northern Forests Climate Hub co-hosted a workshop in October 2024 to gather targeted experts and stakeholders to explore the published USDA’s Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory and to inform the next iteration of the Managed Forest Systems chapter of the guidance.

The objectives of the workshop were to:

• Advance the forest sector guidance in USDA’s Quantifying Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Agriculture and Forestry: Methods for Entity-Scale Inventory.
• Gather stakeholder feedback to help USDA meet growing public demand for information with federally convened standards, science, data, and tools.
• Inform the development of a roadmap for creating the next iteration of the Managed Forest Systems chapter in the guidance.