Estimating basic wood density and its uncertainty for Pinus densiflora in the Republic of Korea

Abstract

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines, uncertainty assessment is an important aspect of a greenhouse gas inventory, and effort should be made to incorporate it into the reporting. The goal of this study was to estimate basic wood density (BWD) and its uncertainty for Pinus densiflora (Siebold & Zucc.) in Korea. In this study, P. densiflora forests throughout the country were divided into two regional variants, which were the Gangwon region variant, distributed on the northeastern part of the country, and the central region variant. A total of 36 representative sampling plots were selected in both regions to collect sample trees for destructive sampling. The trees were selected considering the distributions of tree age and diameter at breast height. Hypothesis testing was carried out to test the BWD differences between two age groups, i.e. age over 20 and less than 20, and differences between the two regions. The test suggested that there was no statistically significant difference between the two age classes. On the other hand, it is suggested a strong evidence of a statistically significant difference between regions. The BWD and its uncertainty were 0.418 g/cm3 and 11.9% for the Gangwon region, whereas they were 0.471g/cm3 and 3.8% for the central region. As a result, the estimated BWD for P. densiflora was more precise than the value provided by the IPCC guidelines.