Addressing uncertainty and bias in land use, land use change, and forestry greenhouse gas inventories

National greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs) will play an increasingly important role in tracking country progress against United Nations (UN) Paris Agreement commitments. Yet uncertainty in land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) NGHGHI estimates may undermine international confidence in emission reduction claims, particularly for countries that expect forests and agriculture to contribute large near-term GHG reductions. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for implementing the uncertainty provisions of the UN Paris Agreement Enhanced Transparency Framework, with a view to identifying the largest sources of LULUCF NGHGI uncertainty and prioritizing methodological improvements. Using the USA as a case study, we identify and attribute uncertainty across all US NGHGI LULUCF “uncertainty elements” (inputs, parameters, models, and instances of plot-based sampling) and provide GHG flux estimates for omitted inventory categories. The largest sources of uncertainty are distributed across LULUCF inventory categories, underlining the importance of sector-wide analysis: forestry (tree biomass sampling error; tree volume and specific gravity allometric parameters; soil carbon model), cropland and grassland (DayCent model structure and inputs), and settlement (urban tree gross to net carbon sequestration ratio) elements contribute over 90% of uncertainty. Net emissions of 123 MMT CO2e could be omitted from the US NGHGI, including Alaskan grassland and wetland soil carbon stock change (90.4 MMT CO2), urban mineral soil carbon stock change (34.7 MMT CO2), and federal cropland and grassland N2O (21.8 MMT CO2e). We explain how these findings and other ongoing research can support improved LULUCF monitoring and transparency.