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Book cover Forest Inventory-based Projection Systems for Wood and Biomass Availability

Part of the book series: Managing Forest Ecosystems ((MAFE,volume 29))

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Abstract

Interest in forest biomass in Canada has resulted in a need to quantify and project, regionally and nationally, the availability of this resource. The motivation behind this activity is generally to evaluate the climate change mitigation potential of bio-energy as a substitute for fossil fuels, or in the increased use of wood products to substitute for more carbon-intensive alternatives. National-level monitoring of forest resources, including biomass, involves collaboration between the federal government and Canada’s provinces and territories. The National Forest Carbon Monitoring Accounting and Reporting System (NFCMARS) is an example of a program that can provide strategic assessments of forest sources across all of Canada. The NFCMARS is usually used for science, policy analysis, and reporting about carbon dynamics in Canada’s 2.3 million km2 of managed forest, but can also be used to predict future biomass resource availability. Canada’s forests face numerous simultaneous natural disturbance risks, which will affect the quantity and type of biomass that will be available in the future. We describe a conceptual framework for assessing this potential future risk from natural disturbances, and demonstrate how NFCMARS can be applied to assess future biomass availability in Canada, based on the results of studies examining potential climate change impacts and mitigation potential. At present, improvements to Canada’s NFCMARS, aimed at reducing uncertainties in current estimates and future forecasts of the characteristics of Canada’s manged forest, including the availability of forest biomass and its climate change mitigation potential, are the subject of ongoing research and development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Not all of Canada’s forest are included in the NFCMARS because large areas are not part of the “managed forest” according to Canada’s definition of forest for reporting under the United Nations Convention on Climate Change.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Northern Forestry Centre, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Juha M. Metsaranta

  2. Natural Resources Canada, Canadian Forest Service, Pacific Forestry Centre, Victoria, BC, Canada

    Carolyn E. Smyth & Werner A. Kurz

Authors
  1. Juha M. Metsaranta
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  2. Carolyn E. Smyth
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  3. Werner A. Kurz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Juha M. Metsaranta .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Forest Research Centre (CEF), School of Agriculture, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Susana Barreiro

  2. Wageningen Environmental Research (Alterra), Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Mart-Jan Schelhaas

  3. Northern Research Station, U.S. Forest Service, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA

    Ronald E. McRoberts

  4. Forest Research Institute of Baden-Württemberg, Freiburg, Germany

    Gerald Kändler

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Metsaranta, J.M., Smyth, C.E., Kurz, W.A. (2017). Canada. In: Barreiro, S., Schelhaas, MJ., McRoberts, R., Kändler, G. (eds) Forest Inventory-based Projection Systems for Wood and Biomass Availability. Managing Forest Ecosystems, vol 29. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56201-8_8

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