1.3 Valuing forests for carbon & other non-wood values

Forests produce a wide range of goods and services which forest managers have been quantifying for centuries to help improve decision-making and production. However, society has changed over these centuries and their demands for goods and services have changed. Technology and measurement theory have also changed over these decades.

This lecture explores the advances made in measurement since professional forestry began in the 1800’s. We will focus on the quantification of biomass / carbon and biodiversity as case studies of the interaction of theory, management objectives and the resources and tools available for measurement.

About the Lecturer

Prof. Cris Brac

Cris is an Associate Professor (Honorary) at the Australian National University and Chief Biometrician for The Mullion Group. He has been practicing, teaching and researching forest management for over a quarter of a century. As Senior Inventory Officer for the Forestry Commission NSW he was responsible for optimising the value and harvesting operations for plantations and native forests, while his PhD research further explored Operations Research and the potential of Expert Systems and Artificial Intelligence in forest management. He developed DISMUT (Decision Information System for Managing Urban Trees) and was co-developer of NCAS which won a Eureka Award for Environmental Science. He has published over 80 peer reviewed articles on forestry and natural resource management.

1.3 Valuing forests for carbon & other non-wood values

In this lecture:

  • Value and quantification
  • Improvements in quantification
  • Sampling
  • Surrogates and co-relations
  • National Carbon Account System
  • Remote sensing
  • More values from other models
  • Biodiversity