Carbon fluxes from contemporary forest disturbances in North Carolina evaluated using a grid-based carbon accounting model and fine resolution remote sensing products

Land use/land cover change is a key component in terrestrial carbon cycle, yet there are still large uncertainties in the terrestrial carbon budget. To reduce such uncertainties and refine the spatial distribution of carbon flux, a 30-m Grid-based Carbon Accounting (GCA) model was proposed. We adapted a well-established bookkeeping model into a spatial-explicit model to utilize Landsat time series stacks and to calculate the carbon fluxes resulting from three types of forest disturbances including forest harvesting, forest-to-urban conversion, and fire. Our model results provide spatial details at sub-ha scale that are crucial for carbon management at individual landowner levels. Sensitivity analysis revealed that both pre-disturbance forest carbon and disturbance intensity had large impact on carbon flux estimates arising from forest disturbances that occurred between 1986 and 2010 in North Carolina. At the state level, forest harvesting and fire from 1986 to 2010 released 88.5 MT and 1.6 MT carbon respectively. During the same period, regrowing trees over the logged area absorbed 142.7 MT carbon while those over burned area absorbed 1.6 MT more. The net flux from harvesting, fire, and post-disturbance growth was −52.5 MT. Conversion of forest to urban resulted in a net source of 5.3 MT. Overall, the areas subject to the three types of disturbances and post-disturbance growth was a net sink of 47.2 MT carbon over the entire study period. While our modeling framework was tested at the 30 m spatial resolution in this study, it can be adapted for use with finer spatial and/or temporal resolution remote sensing products that will become more readily available in the coming years, thus further improve the carbon flux estimates.