Forest Carbon Stocks and Fluxes from the NFCMS, Conterminous USA, 1990-2010

This dataset, derived from the National Forest Carbon Monitoring System (NFCMS), provides estimates of forest carbon stocks and fluxes in the form of aboveground woody biomass (AGB), total live biomass, total ecosystem carbon, aboveground coarse woody debris (CWD), and net ecosystem productivity (NEP) as a function of the number of years since the most recent disturbance (i.e., stand age) for forests of the conterminous U.S. at a 30 m resolution for the benchmark years 1990, 2000, and 2010. The data were derived from an inventory-constrained version of the Carnegie-Ames-Stanford Approach (CASA) carbon cycle process model that accounts for disturbance processes for each combination of forest type, site productivity, and pre-disturbance biomass. Also provided are the core model data inputs including the year of the most recent disturbance according to the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) and the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) data products; the type of disturbance; biomass estimates from the year 2000 according to the National Biomass and Carbon Dataset (NBCD); forest-type group; a site productivity classification; and the number of years since stand-replacing disturbance. The data are useful for a wide range of applications including monitoring and reporting recent dynamics of forest carbon across the conterminous U.S., assessment of recent trends with attribution to disturbance and regrowth drivers, conservation planning, and assessment of climate change mitigation opportunities within the forest sector.