Project Specific Monitoring and Verification: State of the Art and Challenges

Adequate monitoring of carbon sequestered by forestry activities is essential to the future of forestry as a climate change mitigation option. A wide range of approaches has been taken to monitor changes in forest carbon attributable to project activities. This paper describes simple, least-cost/least-precision methods, remote sensing, periodic carbon inventories, and traditional research methods. Periodic carbon inventories are the preferred approach because they are cost-effective, provide measurements with known levels of precision, and allow the monitoring of other values such as biodiversity and commercial timber volumes. Verification of monitoring estimates is discussed as an auditing process designed to evaluate reported carbon sequestration values. The limitations of remote sensing for biomass determination and the potential for changes in monitoring approaches due to improvements in technology are briefly reviewed.