Live tree carbon stock equivalence of fire and fuels extension to the Forest Vegetation Simulator and Forest Inventory and Analysis approaches

The carbon reports in the Fire and Fuels Extension (FFE) to the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) provide two alternate approaches to carbon estimates for live trees (Rebain 2010). These are (1) the FFE biomass algorithms, which are volumebased biomass equations, and (2) the Jenkins allometric equations (Jenkins and others 2003), which are diameter based. Here, we compare FFE and Jenkins-based carbon in aboveground live trees with the component ratio method (CRM) approach (Heath and others 2009) provided in the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) database and focus on identifying where alternate approaches produce equivalent estimates of stand level aboveground live tree carbon.