Forest Greenhouse Gas Inventories

In order to implement the German national greenhouse gas emission reporting system (National Inventory Report, NIR) we draw up the national inventories for forests.

This encompasses:

• to ascertain the carbon stock and its change within the five relevant pools (aboveground and belowground biomass, deadwood, litter and soil) and
• to illustrate the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide.

Since the reporting year 2013 Harvested Wood Products (HWP) are reported as additional pool within forests. The reporting for this pool is, in collaboration between the institutes, conducted by the Thünen-Institute of Wood Research.

Our reporting activities are part of the general emission reporting on the land sector, which is coordinated by the Thünen-Institute of Climate-Smart Agriculture.

As the basis of calculation we mainly use the data of the National Forest Inventory and the National Forest Soil Survey. In some cases additional data is collected. For example, we carried out an additional field inventory (Inventory Study 2008) to measure the carbon stocks in German forests in 2008. This data allows emissions within the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol 2008-2012 to be quantified.

Our reporting system is compliant with the relevant rules and international guidelines. Therefore a focus of our work is to consistently improve our methods, so that accurate, consistent and complete surveys and calculations are secured.