NFCMS Update and Carbon Assessment for Forest Conservation Planning and Action

Climate change can disrupt wildlife habitat and other natural amenities supported by land trusts and other conservation organizations. However, these organizations require good data upon which to base their land protection decisions. This project will update the National Forest Carbon Monitoring System (NFCMS) to establish a data timestamp for 2020, or the most recent possible date, in order to better represent contemporary carbon stocks and expected future sequestration. The project will ensure the dataset better represents present conditions viewed by users on the ground. Doing so will support greater applicability and build confidence from the user community. The project will also use the USGS LCMAP (Land Change Monitoring, Assessment, and Projection) dataset to identify areas of recent forest gain that were missed (and treated as non-forest) in the earlier version.