Full Carbon Accounting

This research proposal addresses the need to close the gap between bottom-up and top-down accounting of net atmospheric carbon emissions, i.e., to reach agreement between mean values. However, its focus is an the consistent and spatiotemporal assessment of existing accounting data in terms of uncertainty. The proposal utilizes bottom-up Full Carbon Accounting (FCA) which will be thoroughly assessed in terms of uncertainties and which is used to bridge the bottom-upop-down `accounting gap`. The geographical focus is an Russia (1) because of the important role of Russia`s terrestrial biosphere in the global carbon cycle and (2) to complement similar ongoing work focusing an other regions in the northern extratropical belt. Consequently a truly consistent and complete bottom-upop-down coverage of the northem extratropical belt can be achieved in terms of carbon. Success in overcoming the `accounting gap` is important and can be considered as a critical test of our knowledge of the earth`s global carbon cycle. The proposed research is expected to address new aspects and questions surrounding the `missing carbon sink` as well as the management of carbon within a holistic systems and verification context. The uncertainty assessment for the bottom-up FCA for Russia will take into account `next generation` methodological developments, such as the spatial description of the biogeochemical cycle at various levels of `geographical organization`, from 1988 to present. To be of use to the global carbon (atmospheric inversion) research community, a regional breakdown of Russia in (up to eight) bio-climatic zones will be considered. Terrestrial sink/source strengths will be processed in terms of their uncertainties so that they can be readily utilized by the global carbon research community. Russia`s full carbon account will be used in atmospheric inversion assessments. This has been agreed between the Forestry (FOR) Project of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the Max-Planck- Institute of Biogeochemistry (in Jena, Germany) and the Department for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology of the University of Princeton (Princeton, New Jersey, USA).