Third Carbon Pro
Newsletter.
Contents
(Some of you received a test version of the newsletter: we
apologize for
the wrong mailing)
Carbon Pro: what’s going
on
During last months the Carbon Pro project continued its
activites! The Transnational Technical Board (TTB) was convened
three times in Vienna, Thessaloniki and Zagreb.
During the 5th meeting of TTB in Vienna (16-17
April), the partners discussed about the framework of two important
databases and shared first opinions about the agenda of the planned
Transnational Conference on local strategies for land use management
according to Kyoto Protocol, held in Ljubljana (Slovenia) on 19th
October 2007.
In Thessaloniki (Greece, 18-19
June), the partners mainly discussed about the opportunity of
signing an agreement, among the decision makers of Regions involved
in the project, concerning the management strategies for forest and
agricultural lands, according to Kyoto Protocol.
In the
TTB in Jastrebarsko and Zagreb (Croatia, 20-21
September) hosted by Croatian Forest Research Institute, the
partners discussed about the dissemination documents foreseen by
Carbon Pro (Transnational Action Plan, a tool for the definition of
the agro-forest systems capability and a database useful for the
website created by Slovenian Forestry Institute). They also defined
the final agenda of the transnational conference foreseen in
Ljubljana (Slovenia).
Furthermore the partners continued their field activities in
order to create two important outputs of the project: the
“Integrated tool for the definition of the
agro-forest systems capability to participate to the function of
carbon-sink”, an instrument specifically targeted to professionals,
students and experts in the forest and agricultural sector, and the
Transnational Action Plan (TAP). This is a document
targeted to decision makers and stakeholders aimed to support taking
into account and integrate carbon stock oriented strategies in the
planning choices, particularly those related to the management of
forest and agricultural systems. The TAP has been carried out by a
team of Carbon Pro partners with the aim to provide guidelines as
well as to make data and information collected during the project
lifetime available to local users.
These two instruments will be
completed in the next months and will be both published on Carbon
Pro website. Moreover, the TAP is going to be printed English,
Italian, Greek, Hungarian, German, Serb, Croat, Bosnian and
Slovenian.
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Carbon Local Markets for the
cost-efficient GHG reduction
During the project meetings, partners agree about stimulating the
establishment of carbon local markets as a strategy
for the promotion and the implementation of concrete actions for
carbon stocking in agricultural and forest ecosystems and as a
method for compensating greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions.
The
general idea is to design and test, at regional level, a concrete
Exchange where industries producing emissions – in particular SMEs
not included yet in the Kyoto Protocol (KP) accountancy - and
farmers and land owners that can absorb those emissions could buy
and sell quotes of carbon.
This strategy should be coherent with
KP and particularly the articles 3.3 and 3.4 that refers to removals
resulting from activities in the sector of Agriculture Forestry and
Other Land Use (AFOLU) that can be measured in Removal Unit
(RMU).
The generation of RMUs at local level, within local carbon
markets, could be accounted on voluntary basis, regardless KP
agreements and relative national ratification to optional 3.4
measures, and constitutes an opportunity for awaking public opinion
about carbon stocking and improve the general capability of CO2
absorption.
From these preambles the partners agreed on the
importance of promoting the creation of local carbon markets by
decision makers and a formal agreement to be signed by authorities
has been proposed for Ljubljana conference, on October 19th.
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Carbon Pro brochure: a tool for
dissemination
In the Carbon Pro website it is available for downloading the
project brochures in the following languages:
English, Italian,
Slovenian, Greek,
Hungarian, German,
Croatian,Bosnian and Serb. The
brochures describe project aims, expected results and methods of the
field measurements and represent an useful instrument in order to
promote the Kyoto strategies and the project results to all
interested subjects.
(go to the
Project Brochure)
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Guidelines on carbon balance
models
The “Common Transnational Guidelines on how to match models”
document illustrates some available models for carbon
accounting and their characteristics in order to support
experts and technicians to approach carbon balance and to find a
starting point for analysis and measurements.
The models have been chosen among those used by Carbon Pro
partners and are described in the document: CO2 FIX, BIOME BGC,
GOTILWA+, ROTH C, WBE MODEL and GORCAM.
Their description
includes: inputs requested, outputs delivered, availability of each
model and information about how it works.
The Common Transnational Guidelines on how to match models and
relative information are freely available to the public and can be
downloaded from Carbon
Pro website.
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New Eddy Covariance tower in
Croatia
(Hrvoje Marjanović [1] and Giorgio Alberti [2])
[1] Department for Forest Management and Forestry Economics,
Forest Research Institute, Cvjetno naselje 41, HR-10450
Jastrebarsko, hrvojem@sumins.hr
[2] Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences,
University of Udine, Via delle Scienze 208, 33100 Udine, Italy giorgio.alberti@uniud.it
 One of the goals of the Carbon-Pro project is the
improvement of tools for assessing the carbon balance of
representative areas in CADSES countries. Lowland forests of Common
oak are one of the most important forest ecosystems in Croatia.
Through the implementation of Carbon-Pro project, researchers of
Forest Research Institute Jastrebarsko (FRIJ) decided to establish a
measuring station for CO2 fluxes in one, such forest located in
Pokupski bazen forest complex not far from Zagreb.
Since
such measuring station would be first of this kind in Croatia,
researchers from FRIJ asked for support colleagues from University
of Udine, Italian partner in the project. Their close collaboration
resulted in setting up and start-up of the CO2 fluxes measuring
station on the 20th September 2007.
Method applied for assessing
fluxes of CO2 between forest and atmosphere is known as Eddy
Covariance method. It uses state of the art instruments mounted on a
tower 21 m above the ground to measure and store data on CO2
concentrations, 3D wind speed and many other meteorological
variables, 24h/day all year round. These kinds of measurements are
important because they can, combined with data from forest
inventory, help in assessing changes in carbon balance of pools that
are difficult to measure, especially soil and roots.
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Local working boards: sharing
strategies and focus on opportunities with territories
In all partners countries were organised local working boards
among local stakeholders in order to:
- discuss about Kyoto Protocol and its application at
local/regional level;
- disseminate Carbon Pro results, in particular the
Transnational Action Plan;
- discuss about different management strategies for forest and
agricultural systems and about their applicability at local level;
- share local goals towards the opportunity given by supporting
actions to improve the management of forest and agricultural
resources.
In the Carbon Pro web site it has been included a section on these
working boards, where all presentations can be downloaded.
A short film about the Local Working Board produced by Friuli
Venezia Giulia Region is also available in Italian language (download
the zip file [7,43MB]).
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Quantifying the carbon stock
changes caused by land cover changes for the federal state of
Salzburg, Austria.
In the Carbon Pro website, section “documents”, you can find a
research report by Anke Benndorf and Hannes Schwaiger of Joanneum
Research, Institute of Energy Research, Graz, Austria, joint partner
of CERE, on “Quantifying the carbon stock changes caused by
land cover changes for the federal state of Salzburg,
Austria”. The paper estimates the C stock change in the
federal state of Salzburg for the time period 1990 to 2000. The
result of the estimation amounts up to a change of -192199, 31 tons
of Carbon between 1990 and 2000. You can download the complete text
here.
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Other initiatives concerning C
stocking
Between the 17th and the 19th of October Slovenian Forestry
Institute prepared two days of experts meetings dealing with
environmental problematic. The common theme was exchange of
scientific state-of-the-art and acknowledgements on forest ecosystem
management and carbon cycling.
On Wednesday, the 17th of October, Slovenian Forestry Institute
presents results of the research project on “Carbon dynamics in
natural beech forest” and hosts an international Colloquium.
Scientists and professionals from Biotechnical Faculty (University
of Ljubljana), Institute Jožef Stefan, researcher from Joint
Research Centre in Ispra and from University of Barcelona, as well
as partners from CarbonPro, Alessandro Peressotti and Giorgio
Alberti of University of Udine, Bernhard Felbermeier of Technical
University Munich, are participating to the presentation and
Colloquium. Slovenian Forestry Institute's intention is to attract
expert public to presentations of expert subjects/contents of
scientific researches on carbon dynamics in forests and
understanding of this process at different levels in forest
according to sink reporting to Kyoto protocol and post-Kyoto
period.
More information in SFI
website.
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