New Zealand Journal of Forestry (2016) 61(2): 22–27
©New Zealand Institute of Forestry

Professional Paper
New Zealand’s National Planted Forest Inventory as part of the Land Use and Carbon Analysis System

Steve Wakelin ^*,1, Nigel Searles ², Thomas Paul ³, Mark Kimberley ³ and Peter Beets <sup>3

1</sup> Scientist, Scion Email: steve.wakelin@scionresearch.com
² Senior Policy Analyst, Ministry for the Environment
³ Scientist, Scion
^*Corresponding author.

Abstract: New Zealand has implemented its Land Use and Carbon Analysis System (LUCAS) since 2007 to meet its reporting requirements under the Kyoto Protocol and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). An important part of LUCAS is a National Forest Inventory (NFI) that covers all plantation and natural forests and allows the estimation of annual carbon sequestration over time through the re-measurement of permanent sample plots. In LUCAS, information from the NFI is combined with a simulation approach that allows backwards and forwards prediction using additional long-term data sources to enable detailed annual reporting on planted forests. In this paper, we provide a general overview of the LUCAS system and the planted forest NFI, and give an example of how data in LUCAS was used for the international reporting of forest carbon sequestration. In future, changes in the approach may be required to accommodate changes in reporting requirements and inventory methods and potential divergence between purely plot-based and simulation approaches.
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