Task force on Yasso modelSC 12

Department of Forest Inventory

JRC technical workshop on reporting LULUCF

Arona 06.05.2014

Alexandra Freudenschuß

Specific contract 12

Framework contract for the provision of forest data and services in support to the

European Forest Data CentreReference: 2012/ S 78-127532 of 21/04/2012

within Task 3 of the LULUCF MRV project:

Input to improving the comparability in MRV

across EU MS

General objective

• Provide support to a limited number of Member States on modeling carbon stock change of forest mineral soils

The contractors have experience on modeling soil carbon stock changes of forest lands in the context of GHG inventories

→ → use Yasso07 in their UNFCCC/KP reporting

Specific tasks of SC 12

•Presentations at JRC LULUCF workshop

•Set up of a forest soil modeling task force (TF)

•State of the art on forest soil modelling

•Preliminary model runs in the selected MS

TF on forest soil modeling

• Four contractors:Administration: IGN (FR)

SC Biomass team: Metla (FN), WSL (CH), BFW (AT)

• Selected MS:

EE, FR, RO, ES

out of eight interested countries;

criteria of selection: data availability, human and technical resources, geographical representation of EU countries, ecological gradient and actual reporting system

Work progress

• Contact established to all four MS

• Successful installation of Yasso07 and model runs with sample data

• Identification of suitable, country-specific data sets

• Data preparation and data enquiry

• First, preliminary model runs - Spain and France

• Active collaboration between contractors and MS (meetings, email exchange)

YASSO – Input data

• Vegetation and Litterfall (time series of litter quantity, natural mortality, harvest) – preferable NFI data of several decades

• Litter quality (fractions of acid-, water-, ethanol and insoluble material)

• Weather data (mean annual temperature, precipitations and temperature amplitude)

National data sets

Estonia France Romania Spain

Site selections

Sample data 102 sites across France

3 main regions 3 regions - 5 plots per site for each tree species

Tree species

not specified yet

mix of many different tree species

Picea sp., Abies alba, Fagus sylvatica, Quercus sp.

Pinus halpensis; Quercus ilex; Pinus sylvestris;

Data sets - biomass

not specified yet

Level I plots – RENECOFOR sites with additional information on litter and deadwoodsince early 1990s

National time series

NFI data NFI 3: 1997-2007 NFI 4: 2008-2018

Site selections

SpainFrance

Fig. 1: Location of RENECOFOR sites (Level I) Fig. 2: Location of the 3 provinces – Navarra (N),

Murcia (SE), Madrid (central).

Preliminary results - Spain

C-stocks at the 5 plots in Rascafria (Madrid region)

Figures 2-7: SOM trend. Blue line: mean SOM (t/ha). Red Lines: 95% Confidence Intervals of the mean.

[t/ha]

[t/ha]

[years] [years]

Preliminary results - Spain

• Lack of information of the turnover of the leaves/needles for some Iberian species.

• Lack of knowledge of the turnover of the loss of coarse roots and branches.

• Lack of data on chemical quality for some tree species.

• NFI do not always registered forest management – identification of harvest and logging is often difficult

• Data are available from 2-3 comparable NFI cycles of 10 years. Longest available time period is 30 years.

Data gaps increase uncertainty of model results Compared to field data Yasso07 results overestimate C-stock

but the trend is similar.

Preliminary results - FranceMean total C-stocks over 102 sites

Figure: Mean total (soil and litter) C stock over 102 sites.

[t/ha]

[years]

Current limitations/assumptions:-Spinup to initialise the Yasso runs and averaging inputs for simulation until observed values are available; -No uncertainty analysis to minimize run time;-Climate currently mean 1971-2000;-C stock estimate lower compared to observation (ca. 70 t C/ha) but ok for a first estimate

Expected challenges

• Application of Yasso07 at sites with extended drought conditions

• Information on the decomposition of litter and deadwood into four chemical compounds may not be sufficient to apply Yasso at sites with highly mixed tree species.

Next steps

• Finalisation of data preparation: biomass and weather time series (esp. EE, RO)

• Set up and/or further improve Yasso07 model runs with country-specific data

• Exchange experience on Yasso07 application at sites with extended drought conditions (FR, ES)

• Draft final report ready in July 2014

YASSO Expert team

• Aleksi Lehtonen – Metla (FN)

• Markus Didion – WSL (CH)

• Robert Jandl – BFW (AT)