LULUCF Data

[markewins]

I have downloaded LULUCF data from CAIT and noticed that large forest
nations such as Laos and Congo do not have any LULUCF emissions.

This seems strange and not consistent with the note you have on how
'Emissions (and Sinks) of Carbon and Land Use Chage' is disagregated
to a country level, written by R.A. Houghton, which suggests this
process is driven by FAO data. However FAO data on these countries
show changes in forest area and biomass.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated

Mark

[CAIT]

Hi Mark,

Thanks very much for your question.

In the latest updates to the CAIT database, we have decided to remove
the older country-by-country LULUCF data published by Houghton in 2003
(these are the estimates referenced in the data note). Instead, we are
now including more recent estimates by Houghton, primarily those
published in the 2010 World Development Report. While we consider
these figures more robust, they are only available for about 25
countries and, additionally, constitute 15-year annual averages,
rather than annual totals. I've included a more detailed note about
the changes below. This can also be found at
http://cait.wri.org/cait.php?page=background&from=yearly&mode=view.
Hope this clarifies things and please let us know if you have any
additional questions.

Regards,

Tom - CAIT Manager


A Note on CO2 Emissions from Land Use Change and Forestry:

Through version 6.0, CAIT included estimates of CO2 from land use
change and forestry (LUCF) developed by Houghton (2003a). These
estimates covered 1950 to 2000 for most countries of the world and
were based on a global and regional analysis of land-use change by
Houghton (2003b). A full description of the methods and results of
Houghton (2003a) are provided on the CAIT website.

In 2008, Dr. Houghton produced an updated inventory of CO2 emissions
from LUCF through 2005 with significant revisions (Houghton, 2008).
However, with the exception of a few major emitters (e.g., China,
United States), these estimates include regional and global fluxes
only (1850-2005), not country-level estimates. Users interested in
these data can access the data set directly through the CDIAC website:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/landuse/houghton/houghton.html.

Based on the work of Houghton (2003a, 2008), estimates of 1990-2005
average annual CO2 emissions from LUCF were developed for the 25
largest contributors to LUCF CO2 emissions and published in the 2010
World Development Report (released 2009).

CAIT v.8.0 has incorporated annual estimates of LUCF emissions from
Houghton (2008) for Canada, China, the United States, and the World,
from 1990-2005, and combined these with the 1990-2005 annual average
estimates of LUCF emissions published in the 2010 World Development
Report.

CAIT v.8.0 therefore features substantially fewer data points for
emissions estimates of CO2 from LUCF (i.e., most countries now include
no data for LUCF emissions and those that do typically have a single
data point for each year between 1990 and 2005). However, CAIT now
provides the most recent and robust estimates available, as well as an
extended time series through 2005, for countries which account for
approximately 95% of global LUCF emissions (World Bank, 2010).