A national-scale tree volume, biomass, and carbon modeling system for the United States

The Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service conducts the national forest inventory of the United States.Although FIA assembles a myriad of forest resource information, many analyses rely on the fundamental attributes of tree volume, biomass, and carbon content.Due to the chronological development of the FIA Program, numerous models and methods are currently used across the country, contingent upon the tree species and geographic location.Thus, an effort to develop nationally consistent methods for prediction of tree volume, biomass, and carbon content was undertaken.A key component of this study was amassing existing data in conjunction with collection of new data to fill information gaps related to tree size and species frequency and spatial distributions.These data were used in a modeling framework that provides compatible predictions of tree volume, biomass, and carbon content across the entire United States.National-scale comparisons to currently used methods show that only a small increase in volume occurs, but substantial increases in biomass and carbon are realized due to relatively large increases in predicted tree top/limbs biomass and carbon.Changes in tree carbon were also affected by use of newly developed species carbon fractions instead of the current constant conversion factor of 0.5.Examples of the calculations required to predict tree volume, biomass, and carbon content for commonly encountered tree conditions provide step-by-step implementation details.