2008 Joint Annual Meeting (5-9 Oct. 2008): Uncertainty of Carbon Changes for Agricultural Land in Canada.
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608-5 Uncertainty of Carbon Changes for Agricultural Land in Canada.



Monday, 6 October 2008
George R. Brown Convention Center, Exhibit Hall E
Brian McConkey, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Agriculture Canada, Box 1030, Swift Current, SK S9H 3X2, CANADA, Julian Hutchinson, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 960 Carling Ave., Ottawa, ON K1A 0C6, Canada and A. J. VandenBygaart, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, 960 Carling Ave., Ottawa, ON K1A 06C, Canada
Uncertainties are required for reporting national greenhouse gas emissions, including changes in carbon stocks on cropland and grassland, under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol.  Uncertainty analysis of soil C change is relatively more complicated than that for other agricultural greenhouse gas emissions (CH4 and N2O) because C change is affected by changes in land use and agricultural activities over many decades prior to a particular inventory year whereas uncertainty of emissions of CH4 and N2O are mostly affected by agricultural activities in the inventory year.   Uncertainty of C stock changes for agricultural land in Canada involves about one million uncertain quantities and was estimated using error propagation methods largely assuming negligible spatial, temporal, or relational covariances among uncertain quantities.  The 95% confidence interval for the C change on cropland in Canada in 2005 was a sink of 9.3 to 14.3 Pg.  The effect of different types of probability distributions of values of uncertain quantities and of significantly non-zero covariances was tested using subsets of data with Monte Carlo simulation.  The latter indicated that most plausible probability distributions and covariances do not affect the final uncertainty greatly.
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