National carbon flux estimation system for forest ecosystems of Canada

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Canada has four million km2 forested ecosystems that fix 1 billion metric tonne carbon from atmosphere into plant tissues every year. The forested ecosystems also store about 6% of the total carbon stored in live plants globally, while Canadian soils store approximately 20% of world soil carbon stocks. Given that Canada is warming twice the global average rate, initiatives to understand the vulnerabilities of carbon stored in plants and soils to climate change and disturbance are indispensable not only for Canada, but also for the global carbon budget and cycle. Canada's forests including areas with treed-peatland, tracts of unmanaged boreal forest, and the most southerly treed Tundra, are most sensitive to global change because of disproportionally greater climate change observed and projected for the country. With increasing scientific and political interest in net-zero and net-negative emissions and nature-based solutions for climate change, there is a strong impetus to develop an integrated national forest carbon estimation system. In Canada, net-zero and net-negative emissions targets cannot be reached without the land sector and in particular forests. The proposed national carbon estimation system quantifies annual net carbon flux of all forest ecosystems in Canada including carbon fixed through plant primary production, and carbon emissions through soil respiration and disturbance. The proposed carbon estimation system is expected to advance the quantification of and reduce uncertainties in our understanding of Canada's forest carbon cycle to evaluate and monitor nature-based solutions to achieve net-zero emissions. The proposed system will also improve our understanding of how direct land management actions impact forest ecosystem carbon balance to inform potential national greenhouse mitigation strategy. Most importantly, the proposed carbon estimation system will be deployed by conservation authorities to monitor actions taken to enhance and protect natural carbon sinks in Canada and will be used to train the next generation scientists on the integration of arterial intelligence and space-based laser scanning technologies to forest ecosystem studies.