Organized by: George Hurtt Richard Birdsey Werner Kurz Allison Thomson Rick Van Schoik

1. NACP Breakout Session:North American Terrestrial Carbon Monitoring and Decision Support Capabilities(combined from CMS and CarboNA proposals) Organized by: George Hurtt Richard Birdsey Werner Kurz Allison Thomson Rick Van Schoik Rodrigo Vargas

2. North American Terrestrial Carbon Monitoring and Decision Support Capabilities • Objective: discuss integrated carbon monitoring and related decision-support capabilities for North America • Discussion: how to coordinate monitoring activities among agencies of the 3 countries

3. North American Terrestrial Carbon Monitoring and Decision Support Capabilities • Key decision-support questions for carbon management (Allison Thompson) • Data and model requirements to support carbon monitoring and management (Werner Kurz) • NASA’s Carbon Monitoring System (George Hurtt) • North American Carbon Program (CarboNA) and supporting tri-lateral programs (Rich Birdsey) • Current satellite assets and asset pipeline (Marc Imhoff/ Diane Wickland)

4. Possible Discussion Questions: how to coordinate monitoring activities among agencies of the 3 countries • To what extent is an integrated carbon monitoring capability needed? Or is a collection of activities occurring in parallel sufficient for science? • How can different agencies within country, and different countries, best collaborate for an integrated carbon monitoring capability? • What CMS capabilities do we have together currently, in the next 3-5 years, and longer term? • Are there new emergent CMS capabilities that can integrate current assets in novel ways, or by leveraging new assets? • Are there critical gaps in our combined CMS capabilities? How can they be addressed? • How can monitoring and models best be combined in context of CMS for improved science, and policy relevant projection capability?

5. Discussion (1) • Emphasis. Systems should focus on policy and management relevant observations, but also be comprehensive to track entire system including feedbacks from natural system. • Resolution. Resolution requirements vary for both scientific considerations, and policy considerations. Different systems/processes have different scales of heterogeneity/variability, and different policy discussions have different resolution requirements. • Continuity. Data continuity and baselines are important for change detection and tracking. Satellite asset pipeline generally promising, but challenges for data continuity need to be met.

6. Discussion (2) • Uncertainties. Quantitative estimates of uncertainties are an extremely important requirement for actionable information, yet not widely produced or available. • Activity data composite. Important to develop data and data processing systems and infrastructure capable of event detection, data comparison, and integration into decision support steps/models. Should there be DIPs? • National Integration. Systems should include and integrate measurements form multiple agencies and domains (e.g. remote sensing, forest inventory, atmospheric sampling,…).

7. Discussion (3) • International Integration. Each country has needs for national reporting and thus own information base. But a single integrated system would provide a consistent scientific basis for policy decisions between countries. Potential to address this with a shared open source framework, national systems with shared components and shared data standards. • Harmonization. Establish a mechanism to provide a modest amount of funding to facilitate three countries working together to harmonize carbon monitoring across North America. • Continued Cooperation. Have regular discussions about monitoring and decision support under tri-lateral and bi-lateral organizations such as CarboNA and CEC.