The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources large-scale forest carbon project: a summary.

Forest carbon and how it changes over time provides an indicator of the sustainability of forest management. It is also a sign of sequestration or emission of carbon dioxide between forests and the atmosphere that can affect the mitigation of atmospheric greenhouse gas accumulation and global climate change. To address the need for information on Ontario’s forest carbon budget, a large-scale forest carbon modelling project was initiated. The background and objectives of this project are described in this report. Three complementary approaches are being used to estimate large-scale forest carbon storage in Ontario’s forests: (1) the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBMCFS), (2) a modified version of FORCARB, which is the model developed by the USDA Forest Service to estimate carbon in U.S. forests, and (3) direct estimation of forest biomass carbon using Ontario’s growth and yield and forest resources inventory data (CAM, the Carbon Allometry Method). Application of the modelling approaches used in this project will meet the reporting requirements for forest carbon specified by the Kyoto Protocol and associated accords. Further, the results of this project will contribute to Ontario’s reporting on Forest Sustainability Indicator 4.1 (Ontario’s forest sector contributions to global carbon enrichment). iii