Canadian Forest Service Publications
Reconstructing and modelling 71 years of forest growth in a Canadian boreal landscape: a test of the CBM-CFS3 carbon accounting model. 2010. Bernier, P.Y.; Guindon, L.; Kurz, W.A.; Stinson, G. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 40: 109-118.
Year: 2010
Issued by: Laurentian Forestry Centre
Catalog ID: 31233
Language: English
Availability: PDF (request by e-mail)
Abstract
We carried out a verification exercise of the Carbon Budget Model of the Canadian Forest Sector (CBM-CFS3) carbon accounting model through the use of a reconstructed data set of forest growth and disturbances spanning a 71 year period (1928-1998) and encompassing a 62 km2 landscape of boreal forest in eastern Canada. Overall, results show that yield curve simulations using CBM-CFS3 underestimate realized net biomass accrual by 10% in undisturbed stands. The bias in disturbed stands may be slightly larger. Errors linked to the estimation of the initial 1928 merchantable volume and biomass through the operational forest photointerpretation and inventory procedure may be the largest single cause of the bias. The local application of regionally parameterized yield curves may also be at fault. It is unlikely that long-term trends in climate or atmospheric composition may have generated such bias. Analyses of changes in specific carbon pools and comparisons made with results from a similar exercice carried out in a Pacific coastal forest show a small relative impact on total carbon from forest management activities in the absence of natural disturbances.