Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon ... - FAO

Community guidelines for accessing forestry voluntary carbon markets
on visual estimates of degree of decomposition is used. For ‘lying’
dead wood, a line-transect method is used, along with estimates of
the density of dead wood.
3. http://www.v-c-s.org/methodologies/VMD0003 for litter. This is
done by litter sample collection, and comparison of green and dry
weight of the samples.
4. http://www.v-c-s.org/methodologies/VMD0004 for soil organic
carbon. This is done through random point sampling and laboratorybased
drying and analysis. This cannot be done without access to
the required laboratory equipment.
5. http://www.v-c-s.org/methodologies/VMD0005 for carbon stocks
in the long-term wood products pool. This involves recording
information on product assortments at the time of harvesting and
initial processing and Biomass Conversion and Expansion Factors
(BCEF), which are available for commercially-viable tree species. To
allow for degradation of forest products, Oxidation Factors (OFs) are
also used, allowing for different rates of decay between tropical and
non-tropical climates.
6. In addition, under the CDM, a tool has been approved to determine
when a carbon pool has such little impact on the grand total of
a project that it can be omitted from the quantification exercise:
“Tool for testing significance of GHG emissions in A/R CDM
project activities.” See http://cdm.unfccc.int/methodologies/
ARmethodologies/tools/ar-am-tool-04-v1.pdf
The VCS provides the clearest guidance on which carbon pools should
be included when carbon is quantified. This guidance is different for
each project type (see Table 5). This also serves as good guidance for
other project methodologies.
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