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2013 SUPPLEMENT TO THE 2006
IPCC GUIDELINES FOR
NATIONAL GREENHOUSE GASINVENTORIES: WETLANDS

Methodological Guidance on Organic and Wet Soils
across IPCC Land-use Categories

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OVERVIEW

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1 INTRODUCTION

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The 2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Wetlands(Wetlands Supplement) provides methods for estimating anthropogenic emissions and removals of greenhousegases from wetlands (lands that are saturated by water for all or part of the year). The Wetlands Supplement does
not provide guidance on permanently flooded lands such as reservoirs1. It supplements the guidance contained in
the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories2 (2006 IPCC Guidelines) which provide
methodologies for estimating national anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhousegases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol. While the 2006 IPCC Guidelines include a chapter on wetlands, it
is restricted to peatlands drained and managed for peat extraction, and some guidance for drained organic soils,
and is therefore incomplete; it does not cover all wetlands types and does not characterize all of the significant
activities occurring on the wetlands that it does cover (e.g., rewetting of peatlands is not included).

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31This supplement covers inland peatlands and other wetlands on mineral soils, coastal wetlands including
mangrove forests, tidal marshes and seagrass meadows, and constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment.

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The 2006 IPCC Guidelines divide all national land into six broad land-use categories: Forest Land, Cropland,
Grassland, Settlements, Wetlands and Other Land (see Chapter 3, Volume 4 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines andBox 1 below). The lands covered in the Wetlands Supplement may occur in any of the IPCC land-use categories.
The land-use category that a parcel of land is reported under depends on national land-use category definitions,data collection systems and tracking of land transitions. For example, forested peatland can be classified as
Forest Land, plantations on peatland may be classified as Forest Land or Cropland depending on national forest
definitions, and mangrove forests may be classified as Forest Land or Wetlands. Chapter 1 provides a decision
tree to follow (Fig 1.1) to assist in determining which chapters apply for any land whatever the IPCC land-use
category for that land. Emissions and removals from constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment are reported
under the waste sector; constructed wetlands are not a land-use category.

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1.1

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The Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O held on 19th-21st October, 2010 in Geneva, concluded that:

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Since the 2006 IPCC Guidelines were completed much new scientific information is now
available about various wetlands that enable emissions and removals to be estimated fromwetland restoration and rewetting especially for peat lands. The meeting recommended that
the IPCC provide additional methodological guidelines for the rewetting and restoration ofpeat land; emissions from fires, ditches and waterborne carbon; and constructed wetlands
for waste water disposal, to fill gaps in the existing guidelines.

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This Wetlands Supplement has been produced in response to the conclusions of this expert meeting and also in
response to an invitation from the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of theUnited Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at its 33rd session, held in December
2010 in Cancun, which invited the IPCC to prepare additional guidance on wetlands, focusing on the rewetting
and restoration of peatlands. Document FCCC/SBSTA/2010/13, paragraph 72 states:

BACKGROUND

1An IPCC Expert Meeting concluded that “The participants did not agree that there was now sufficient new information
available to produce new and additional guidelines based on the latest literature. They did, however, agree on the need to
discuss a range of associated issues, such as the impact of reservoirs on total emissions from watersheds, allocation ofemissions to specific drivers and how emissions may be related to specific reservoir typologies.” see IPCC 2011, IPCC
Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O eds: Eggleston H.S., Srivastava N., Tanabe K., Baasansuren J., andFukuda M. Meeting Report of the IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O, Geneva, Switzerland, 19-21
October, 2010, Pub. IGES, Japan 2011
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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2006) 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories,
Prepared by the National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme, Eggleston H.S., Buendia L., Miwa K., Ngara T. andTanabe K. (eds). Published: IGES, Japan.

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The SBSTA took note of the summary of the co-chairs of the IPCC expert meeting on
harvested wood products, wetlands and N2O emissions from soils. Noting that science hasdeveloped in some areas with regard to wetlands, the SBSTA invited the IPCC to undertake
further methodological work on wetlands, focusing on the rewetting and restoration ofpeatland, with a view to filling in the gaps in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National
Greenhouse Gas Inventories (hereinafter referred to as the 2006 IPCC Guidelines) in theseareas and to complete this work for the thirty-ninth session of the SBSTA.

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In response to this SBSTA invitation, the IPCC held a scoping meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, from 30th
March to 1st April, 2011. This meeting produced a draft Terms of Reference (ToR), including annotated chapter
outline that were approved by the IPCC at its 33rd Session in Abu Dhabi (10th-13th May 2011).

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66This Wetlands Supplement aims to supplement the 2006 IPCC Guidelines by filling gaps in the coverage of
wetlands and organic soils.

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The 2006 IPCC Guidelines themselves were prepared in response to an invitation by the Parties to the UNFCCC.
They aim to assist Parties in fulfilling their commitments under the UNFCCC to prepare national inventories ofanthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal
Protocol. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines are in five volumes. Volume 1 describes the basic steps in inventory
development and offers the general guidance in greenhouse gas emissions and removals estimates based on theauthors’ understanding of accumulated experiences of countries over the period since the late 1980s, whennational greenhouse gas inventories started to appear in significant numbers. Volumes 2 to 5 offer the guidancefor estimates in different economic sectors.

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Previously the IPCC had developed the Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas
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Inventories (1996 IPCC Guidelines), together with the Good Practice Guidance and Uncertainty Management
4in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (GPG2000) and the Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-Use
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Change and Forestry (GPG-LULUCF). Taken together, these provide internationally agreed methodologies
that countries currently have been using to estimate national greenhouse gas emissions and removals to reportunder the UNFCCC. The three-volume 1996 IPCC Guidelines define the coverage of the national inventory interms of gases and categories of emissions by sources and removals by sinks, and the GPG2000 and GPGLULUCF provide additional guidance on choice of estimation methodology, improvements of the methods, aswell as advice on cross-cutting issues, including estimation of uncertainties, time series consistency and quality
assurance and quality control (QA/QC). The Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC at its 17th session
decided that, starting from the inventory submissions due in 2015, Annex I Parties shall use the methodologies
provided in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, unless stated otherwise in the UNFCCC Annex I inventory reporting
guidelines. (FCCC/CP/2011/9/Add.2)

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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (1997). Houghton J.T., Meira Filho L.G., Lim B., Tréanton K.,
Mamaty I., Bonduki Y., Griggs D.J. and Callander B.A. (Eds). Revised 1996 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse
Inventories. IPCC/OECD/IEA, Paris, France.

4Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2000). Penman J., Kruger D., Galbally I., Hiraishi T., Nyenzi B.,
Emmanuel S., Buendia L., Hoppaus R., Martinsen T., Meijer J., Miwa K., and Tanabe K. (Eds). Good Practice Guidanceand Uncertainty Management in National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. IPCC/OECD/IEA/IGES, Hayama, Japan.

5Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (2003). Penman J., Gytarsky M., Hiraishi T., Krug, T., Kruger D.,
Pipatti R., Buendia L., Miwa K., Ngara T., Tanabe K., and Wagner F (Eds). Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, landUse Change and Forestry IPCC/IGES, Hayama, Japan.

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See the Report of the Fourth Session of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice(FCCC/SBSTA/1996/20), paragraph 30; decisions 2/CP.3 and 3/CP.5 (UNFCCC reporting guidelines for preparation ofnational communications by Parties included in Annex I to the Convention, part I: UNFCCC reporting guidelines onannual inventories), decision 18/CP.8, revising the guidelines adopted under decisions 3/CP.5, and 17/CP.8 adopting
improved guidelines for the preparation of national communications from Parties not included in Annex I to theConvention, and subsequent decisions 13/CP.9 and 15/CP.10.

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2 LAND CLASSIFICATION

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In this Wetlands Supplement the IPCC provides guidance for wetland types (except permanently flooded lands)
regardless of how the land is classified. For example, forested peatlands are usually classified as Forest Land
when using the 2006 IPCC Guidelines but guidance given here is applicable to these forested peatlands.
Inventory compilers therefore need to consult this Wetlands Supplement whenever the land they are considering
is either wet (saturated by water for all or part of the year), organic or drained.

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The term wetlands in this Wetlands Supplement refers to lands where the soils are either wet (saturated for all orpart of the year), or organic or drained. This is broader than the coverage in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, wheremanaged wetlands are defined as lands where the water table is artificially changed (e.g. drained or raised) or
those created through human activity (e.g. damming a river) and that are not Forest Land, Cropland, Grassland or
Settlements.

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BOX 1 - IPCC LAND-USE CATEGORIES

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The land-use categories for greenhouse gas inventory reporting are defined in the 2006 IPCC
Guidelines as follows:

103(i) Forest Land

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This category includes all land with woody vegetation consistent with thresholds used to define
Forest Land in the national greenhouse gas inventory. It also includes systems with a vegetation
structure that currently fall below, but in situ could potentially reach the threshold values used by acountry to define the Forest Land category.

108(ii) Cropland

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This category includes cropped land, including rice fields, and agro-forestry systems where thevegetation structure falls below the thresholds used for the Forest Land category.

111(iii) Grassland

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This category includes rangelands and pasture land that are not considered Cropland. It also
includes systems with woody vegetation and other non-grass vegetation such as herbs and brushes
that fall below the threshold values used in the Forest Land category. The category also includes
all grassland from wild lands to recreational areas as well as agricultural and silvi-pastural systems,
consistent with national definitions.

117(iv) Wetlands

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This category includes areas of peat extraction and land that is covered or saturated by water for allor part of the year (e.g., peatlands) and that does not fall into the Forest Land, Cropland, Grasslandor Settlements categories. It includes reservoirs as a managed sub-division and natural rivers andlakes as unmanaged sub-divisions.

122(v) Settlements

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This category includes all developed land, including transportation infrastructure and humansettlements of any size, unless they are already included under other categories. This should beconsistent with national definitions.

126(vi) Other Land

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This category includes bare soil, rock, ice, and all land areas that do not fall into any of the otherfive categories. It allows the total of identified land areas to match the national area, where data are
available. If data are available, countries are encouraged to classify unmanaged lands by the above
land-use categories (e.g., into Unmanaged Forest Land, Unmanaged Grassland, and Unmanaged
Wetlands). This will improve transparency and enhance the ability to track land-use conversions
from specific types of unmanaged lands into the categories above.

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3 COVERAGE OF THE WETLANDSSUPPLEMENT

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Table 1 shows the contents of the Wetlands Supplement.

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TABLE 1
CONTENTS OF THE WETLANDS SUPPLEMENT
ChapterContents

1.

Introduction

Introduction and Scope of this document. A brief discussion of thetypes of lands covered and how to identify the appropriate guidance
within this supplement.

2.

Drained Inland Organic Soils

Guidance for managed organic soils including land drained forforestry, croplands, grazing, settlements etc.

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Cross-cutting
Guidance
Rewetted Organic Soils
Restored Peatlands

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Coastal wetlands

Covers all coastal areas from the inland tidal limit to the seaward
extent of vascular plants. This includes mangroves, salt marshes andseagrass meadows.

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Inland Wetland Mineral Soils

Guidance for managed inland wetland mineral soils, including lands
used for forestry, cropland, grazing, and settlements, and rewetted
mineral soils, such as in wetland restoration and creation.

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Constructed Wetlands – wastewater
treatment

Guidance on wetlands constructed for wastewater treatment.

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Cross-cutting Issues and Reporting

Provides overall guidance on how to report emissions and removals
from these lands in the framework of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. Also
gives general good practice guidance on cross-cutting issues (keycategory and uncertainty analysis, times series consistency and
QA/QC) to supplement that given in Volume 1 of the 2006 IPCC
Guidelines.

onand

Guidance on rewetted organic soils, including peatland restoration.

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Estimation methods are provided for CO2, CH4 and N2O: the three greenhouse gases emitted and removed bywetlands.

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The Wetlands Supplement updates and extends the coverage of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. Updating may havechanged emission factors from the 2006 IPCC Guidelines.

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Peatlands and organic soils. In this supplement guidance, peatlands are included along with organic soils.
Drainage and restoration are both covered. Restoration means activities including rewetting aimed at restoring
the original vegetation and functions of the peatlands or organic soils. Restoration can reduce the CO2 emissions
caused by drainage, though emissions of CH4 may increase. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines included some guidanceon drainage, but not restoration.

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Coastal wetlands. Coastal wetlands include mangrove forests, tidal marshes and seagrass meadows. They can bea substantial carbon reservoir but are often affected by human activities including development (e.g. aquaculture
or conversion to agriculture or settlements); use (e.g. fishing, collection of wood, grazing) or impacts such as
dredging and changes in water level. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines provided no specific guidance for coastal
wetlands and new guidance is given in Chapter 4 on how to treat emissions and removals associated with humanactivities which affect them.

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Inland wetland mineral soils. Not all wetlands have organic soils. Mineral soil wetlands include riparian
wetlands, forested swamps and marshes and can occur in all climate zones. These wetlands can be affected by
activities such as agriculture, grazing, forestry, drainage, and rewetting as part of wetland restoration or creation.
Chapter 5 covers methodologies for quantifying emissions and removals from managed land on wetland mineralsoils.

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Saline inland wetlands. These are also known as playas, pans, salt lakes, brackish wetlands, salinas, and sabkhas.
Saline wetlands are important parts of otherwise arid landscapes across the globe. Little information is available
in the literature to assess potential greenhouse gas emissions or removals from these lands and so default factors
cannot be given. Where available, country-specific data may be used to estimate carbon pools and fluxes fromsaline inland wetlands.

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Rice cultivation. Additional emission factors for lowland rice production on drained tropical peatlands are given
in Chapter 2.

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Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment. These are wetlands that have been designed and constructed touse natural processes involving vegetation, soils, and associated microbial assemblages to treat wastewater. The
guidance supplements Volume 5 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines on Waste.

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Peatland managed for peat production. Peat production is covered in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines (Chapter 7,
Volume 4) and additional guidance is given here.

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Permanently flooded lands are not covered by this Wetlands Supplement. The Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands
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and Soil N2O concluded that insufficient new information has become available, since the production of the2006 IPCC Guidelines, to enable new and additional guidelines to be produced. The available measurement data
do not cover a sufficiently wide geographic or climatic range, and the Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands andSoil N2O agreed that before guidance could be developed there needed to be consensus on issues including theimpact of reservoirs on total emissions from watersheds, allocation of emissions to specific drivers and how
emissions may be related to specific reservoir typologies. The IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy
8Sources and Mitigation of Climate Change also noted that due to the lack of widespread measurement data it
was not possible to make global estimates of the size of emissions from reservoirs.

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4 MANAGED LAND AND
ANTHROPOGENIC EMISSIONS

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The 2006 IPCC Guidelines aim to provide methods to estimate anthropogenic emissions and removals as
required for reporting under the UNFCCC. Many wetlands on managed land have significant non-anthropogenic
fluxes of greenhouse gases. In practice, it is difficult to separate anthropogenic and natural emissions, and so in
the 2006 IPCC Guidelines it is good practice to report emissions and removals from managed land as a proxy foranthropogenic emissions and removals (Pages 1.4-1.5, Chapter 1, Volume 4 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines). An
9expert meeting held in May 2009 in Brazil, reconsidered the issue and concluded that, although suitable
methods for a better quantification of anthropogenic emissions and removals had been demonstrated in specificcircumstances, there was no suitable, globally applicable alternative to the use of managed land as a proxy foranthropogenic emissions and removals.

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The authors considered that the use of managed land as a proxy for anthropogenic emissions and removals
should continue. They also noted that the 2006 IPCC Guidelines restricted managed wetlands to wetlands where

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IPCC 2011, IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O eds: Eggleston H.S., Srivastava N., Tanabe K.,
Baasansuren J., and Fukuda M. Meeting Report of the IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O, Geneva,
Switzerland, 19-21 October, 2010, Pub. IGES, Japan 20118
IPCC, 2011: IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation. Prepared by Working
Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [O. Edenhofer, R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, K. Seyboth, P.
Matschoss, S. Kadner, T. Zwickel, P. Eickemeier, G. Hansen, S. Schlömer, C. von Stechow (eds)]. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1075 pp.
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IPCC 2010, Revisiting the Use of Managed Land as a Proxy for Estimating National Anthropogenic Emissions andRemovals, eds: Eggleston H.S., Srivastava N., Tanabe K., Baasansuren J. Meeting Report, 5 -7 May, 2009, INPE, São José
dos Campos, Brazil, Pub. IGES, Japan 2010

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the water table is artificially changed (e.g., drained or raised). This Wetlands Supplement extends this coverage
to also include wetlands created, or where emissions and removals are directly influenced, by human activity.

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5 THE WETLANDS SUPPLEMENT AND
THE 2006 IPCC GUIDELINES

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The 2006 IPCC Guidelines themselves are an evolutionary development starting from the 1996 IPCC Guidelines,
GPG2000 and GPG-LULUCF. This evolutionary approach helps ensure continuity, and allows for theincorporation of experiences with the existing guidelines, new scientific information, and the results of the
UNFCCC inventory review process. The most significant changes occurred in Volume 4, which consolidated theapproach to Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) in GPG-LULUCF and the Agriculture sector
in GPG2000 into a single Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU) Volume. This Wetlands
Supplement adds to the guidance given in Volume 4, and provides updates where science has advanced, but does
not replace it. This Wetlands Supplement also adds to the guidance given in Volume 5, Waste.

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The 2006 IPCC Guidelines retain the definition of good practice that was introduced with GPG2000. Thisdefinition has gained general acceptance amongst countries as the basis for inventory development. According tothis definition, national inventories of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and removals consistent withgood practice are those, which contain neither over- nor under-estimates so far as can be judged, and in which
uncertainties are reduced as far as practicable.These requirements are intended to ensure that estimates ofemissions by sources and removals by sinks, even if uncertain, are bona fide estimates, in the sense of notcontaining any biases that could have been identified and eliminated.

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The Wetlands Supplement, like the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, generally provides guidance on estimation methods atthree levels of detail, from Tier 1 (the default method) to Tier 3 (the most detailed method). The guidance
generally consists of mathematical specification of the methods and equations for estimating emissions/removals
and, information on emission factors or other parameters to use in generating the estimates, and sources ofactivity data to estimate the overall level of net emissions (emission by sources minus removals by sinks).
Properly implemented, all tiers are intended to provide unbiased estimates, and accuracy and precision should, ingeneral, improve from Tier 1 to Tier 3. The provision of different tiers enables inventory compilers to use
methods consistent with their resources and to focus their efforts on those categories of emissions and removals
that contribute most significantly to national emission totals and trends.

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The Wetlands Supplement follows the approach in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines by guiding the application of thetiered approach by means of decision trees. A decision tree within each methodological chapter (Chapters 2-6)
guides the user to the appropriate tier to use for estimating emissions and removals of greenhouse gases from thecategory or sub-category under consideration, given national circumstances. National circumstances include theavailability of required data, and contribution made by the category to total national emissions and removals andto their trend over time. The most important categories, in terms of total national emissions and the trend, arecalled key categories 10 . Decision trees generally require Tier 2 or Tier 3 methods for key categories. Thisapproach to the use of different tiers allows limited resources to be focused on those areas of the inventory that
contribute significantly to the overall total or trend in emissions.

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Within Chapter 7 of the Wetlands Supplement advice is also provided on:

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ensuring data collection is representative and time series are consistent,

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estimation of uncertainties,

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(iii)

guidance on quality assurance and quality control procedures to provide cross-checks during inventory
compilation, and

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information to be documented, archived and reported to facilitate review and assessment of inventory
estimates. Reporting tables and worksheets for Tier 1 methods are provided.

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The Wetlands Supplement fills gaps in the coverage of wetlands, organic soils, and drained lands contained in the2006 IPCC Guidelines. Permanently flooded lands are not addressed.

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This increased methodological guidance will allow an additional range of potentially significant emission
sources, removals and mitigation strategies to be covered by the 2006 IPCC Guidelines and improve thecomplete land coverage of the guidelines.

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The guidance follows the same form as that contained in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, in particular it incorporates
good practice guidance, including: tiered approaches; key category analysis; Tier1 default parameters; guidanceon higher tiers; uncertainty analysis; QA/QC and documentation.

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