2007 Volume 6 Pages 129-140
The purpose of this study was to predict the amounts of carbon sequestered in the Article 3.3 forests under the Kyoto Protocol during the first commitment period on a national scale. The land use change from forests to other land covers and uses was regarded as the Afforestation and Reforestation (AR) activities, and the contrary land use change was regarded as the Deforestation (D) activities. The areas of AR and D activities from 1976 to 1995 were identified using the national statistics. Furthermore, the time series changes in the areas were extrapolated from 1995 to 2012, the end of the first commitment period, using the power series and logarithmic functions fitted to the observed AR and D areas, respectively. Then the age class distributions of cumulative AR areas at 2008 and 2013 and cumulative D area from 2008 to 2012 were identified, which were converted to the amounts of carbon stock by multiplying them by stem volumes, biomass expansion factors, wood density and carbon content. By the stock change method, the amounts of carbon sequestration in the Article 3.3 forests during the first commitment period was calculated as the carbon stock in cumulative AR forest at 2013 minus the carbon stock in cumulative AR forest at 2008 minus the carbon stock in cumulative D forest from 2008 to 2012. As a result, the Article 3.3 forests would sequester approximately 3.81 million t-C during the first commitment period (= 0.76 million t-C/yr).
