What’s being proposed
MPI are proposing to make some minor and technical changes to the Field Measurement Approach Standard. The main change proposed is to increase the number of measured tree heights in each sample plot, from 5 to 10, per Species Group. This is more in line with industry good practice, and is expected to significantly improve the amount of information processed automatically, as well as improving the accuracy of carbon calculations.
MPI proposes to implement these changes by updating the FMA information required to be collected (as specified in the FMA Standard). There will also be some minor consequential changes to the FMA Information Standard. This specifies the form in which FMA information must be supplied to MPI. Several further minor and technical changes to the Standards are proposed that will improve consistency, completeness and the accuracy of carbon calculations as detailed in the following sections.
MPI would especially like feedback on:
- Whether the proposed changes will significantly affect your collection of field data (including time/cost)?
- Whether you consider the changes to be beneficial or not?
- The proposed changes are intended to make MPI processing times faster, and carbon calculation more accurate. Are processing times and/or carbon calculation accuracy a concern for you?
Download the consultation document [PDF, 336 KB]
How to make a submission
- Download the submission form [DOCX, 73 KB]
Email the form and any comments by 5pm Friday 5 June to climatechange@mpi.govt.nz
We’d like to hear from you
MPI would like to hear your views on the proposed changes to the FMA listed below, particularly if you are a current FMA participant, a participant who completed the FMA process for the first commitment period, or a registered ETS participant who may be subject to the FMA in the future.
Background
Analysis of the first round of FMA information collected during 2012 was completed in a routine and well-automated manner for the majority of FMA participants. In a minority of cases manual intervention was required to complete analysis. This caused delays in the generation of participant-specific carbon tables for stakeholders.
MPI aims to improve delivery times for carbon tables in the future. It was assessed that the key processing bottlenecks were caused by:
- the need to seek additional information from stakeholders when there were unusual forest circumstances (most often involving mixtures of forest species)
- too few measured tree heights being available to estimate heights of non-measured trees when the age, species, stocking or growing conditions in a permanent sample plot were not typical of the wider forest.
The supply of additional information in unusual forest circumstances is expected to only affect data collection at a few sample plots for a few participants – and involves collection of small amounts of data that MPI would have had to ask for anyway. It should also be simpler to collect the information needed when in the forest, rather than being asked to provide information later during data processing as is currently the case.
All submissions on this document will be subject to the Official Information Act 1982. Therefore, if you consider that all or any part of your submission is commercially sensitive or should be treated as confidential, please state this clearly along with your reasons when making you submission.
