Comparison of approaches for reporting forest fire-related biomass loss and greenhouse gas emissions in southern Europe

Abstract

Wildfires are the most common disturbances in Mediterranean forest ecosystems that cause significant emissions of greenhouse gases as a result of biomass burning. Despite this, there is reasonably high uncertainty regarding the actual fraction of burnt biomass and the related CO2 and non-CO2 gas emissions released during forest fires. The aim of this paper is to compare existing methodologies adopted in the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory reports of five of the most fire-affected countries of southern Europe (Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, France) with those proposed in the literature, to operationally estimate forest fire emissions, and to discuss current perspectives on reducing uncertainties in reporting activities for the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry sector under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. Five selected approaches have been experimentally applied for the estimation of burnt biomass in forest fire events that occurred in Italy in the period 2008–2010. Approaches based on nominal rates of biomass loss can lead to an overly conservative value or, conversely, to underestimation of the fraction of burnt biomass. Uncertainties can be greatly reduced by an operational method able to assess inter-annual and local variability of fire effects on fire-affected forest types.