Overview

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

Methodological Guidance on Lands with Wet andDrained Soils, and Constructed Wetlands for Wastewater
Treatment

OVERVIEW

2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Wetlands

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Overview

Authors
Dominique Blain (Canada), Rizaldi Boer (Indonesia), Simon Eggleston (IPCC TFI TSU1), Sergio Gonzalez (Chile),
Takahiko Hiraishi (Japan), William Irving (USA), Thelma Krug (Brazil), Alex Krusche (Brazil), EmmanuelJonathan Mpeta (Tanzania), Jim Penman (UK), Riitta Pipatti (Finland), Robert Sturgiss (Australia), Kiyoto Tanabe(IPCC TFI TSU) and Sirintornthep Towprayoon (Thailand)

Review Editors
Steen Gyldenkærne (Denmark) and Erda Lin (China)

1

Until February, 2013.

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2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories: Wetlands

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Contents
1

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... O.4

2

Background ...................................................................................................................................... O.5

3

Coverage of the Wetlands Supplement............................................................................................. O.6

4

Managed Land and Anthropogenic Emissions ................................................................................ O.8

5

The Wetlands Supplement and the 2006 IPCC Guidelines .............................................................. O.9

TablesTable 1

Coverage of the Wetlands Supplement ............................................................................. O.6

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Overview

1 INTRODUCTION
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 greenhouse gases fromwetlands and drained soils. The scope of the Wetlands Supplement is broader than the coverage of Wetlands in the2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories 2 (2006 IPCC Guidelines), where managed
wetlands are defined as lands where the water table is artificially changed (i.e. lowered or raised) or those createdthrough human activity (e.g. damming a river) and that do not fall into Forest Land, Cropland, or Grasslandcategories. The emissions and removals from wetlands and drained soils addressed in the Wetlands Supplement canoccur under any land-use category or other relevant category of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. The guidance in the
Wetlands Supplement is not intended to change the allocation of wetlands for reporting purposes.
The guidance provided is supplementary to that contained in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, which provide
methodologies for estimating national anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhousegases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol3. The content of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines on wetlands is restricted
to peatlands drained and managed for peat extraction, conversion to flooded lands, and some guidance for drainedorganic soils. It is therefore incomplete; it does not cover all wetland types and does not characterize all of thesignificant activities occurring on wetlands that are covered (e.g. rewetting of peatlands is not included).
This Wetlands Supplement supplements the 2006 IPCC Guidelines by filling in gaps in the coverage and providing
updated information reflecting scientific advances. This includes updating of emission factors. It covers inland
organic soils and wetlands on mineral soils, coastal wetlands including mangrove forests, tidal marshes and seagrassmeadows, and constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment. For the reasons described subsequently, the Wetlands
Supplement does not provide guidance on permanently flooded lands such as reservoirs.

2

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. and Tanabe K. (eds). Published: IGES, Japan.

3

Greenhouse gases addressed in the Wetlands Supplement are: CO2, CH4 and N2O.

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2 BACKGROUND
The IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O held on 19-21 October, 2010 in Geneva4, concluded
that:
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 from wetland restoration andrewetting especially for peat lands. The meeting recommended that the IPCC provide additional
methodological guidelines for the rewetting and restoration of peat land; emissions from fires, ditches andwaterborne carbon; and constructed wetlands for waste water disposal, to fill gaps in the existing
guidelines.
The Wetlands Supplement has been produced in response to the conclusions of this expert meeting, and in responseto an invitation from the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the United 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 ofpeatlands. Document FCCC/SBSTA/2010/13, paragraph 72 states:...the SBSTA invited the IPCC to undertake further methodological work on wetlands, focusing on therewetting and restoration of peatland, 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 these areas
and to complete this work for the thirty-ninth session of the SBSTA.
In response to this invitation, the IPCC held a scoping meeting in Genevafrom 30 March to 1 April, 2011. This
meeting produced a draft Terms of Reference (ToR), including annotated chapter outline, which was approved by
the IPCC at its 33rd Session in Abu Dhabi (10-13 May 2011).

4

IPCC (2011) IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O. Eggleston H.S., Srivastava N., Tanabe K.,
Baasansuren J., and Fukuda M. (eds). Meeting Report of the IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O,
Geneva, Switzerland, 19-21 October, 2010, Published: IGES, Japan 2011.

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3 COVERAGE OF THE WETLANDSSUPPLEMENT
The 2006 IPCC Guidelines classify all land area into six broad land-use categories: Forest Land, Cropland,
Grassland, Wetlands, Settlements, and Other Land (see Chapter 3, Volume 4 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines). The
lands covered in the Wetlands Supplement may occur in any of the IPCC land-use categories. The land-use category
under which land is reported depends on national land-use category definitions, data collection systems and trackingof land transitions. For example, forested peatland can be classified as Forest Land, plantations on peatland may beclassified as Forest Land or Cropland depending on national forest definitions, and mangrove forests may beclassified as Forest Land or Wetlands. Due to their function, constructed wetlands are not considered as a land-use
category. The coverage of the Wetlands Supplement is summarised in Table 1.

TABLE 1
COVERAGE OF THE WETLANDS SUPPLEMENT
Chapter

Coverage

1.

Introduction

Guidance on the use of the report and generic information on the linkages
between the 2006 IPCC Guidelines and the supplementary guidance that itpresents.

2.

Drained Inland Organic
Soils

Guidance on managed inland organic soils including land drained for forestry,
croplands, grazing, and settlements across climate zones.

3.

Rewetted Organic Soils

Guidance on rewetted organic soils including boreal, temperate, and tropical
wetlands occurring in any land-use category.

4.

Coastal Wetlands

Guidance on specified management activities in coastal areas of mangroves,tidal marshes and seagrass meadows.

5.

Inland Wetland Mineral
Soils

Guidance on managed inland wetland mineral soils, including lands used forforestry, cropland, grazing, and settlements, and rewetted mineral soils.

6.

Constructed Wetlands for
Wastewater Treatment

Guidance on wetlands constructed for wastewater treatment.

7.

Cross-cutting Issues andReportingOverall guidance on how to report anthropogenic emissions and removals
from wetlands in the framework of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines. Also gives
general good practice guidance on cross-cutting issues (key category anduncertainty analysis, times series consistency and quality assurance/quality
control) to supplement that given in Volume 1 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines.

A summary of the main methodological updates to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines is provided below. Chapter 1 provides
a decision tree to help inventory compilers determine which chapters of this supplement to apply and describes thecoverage and definitions of the wetland types.
Peatlands and organic soils. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines included some guidance on drainage (Chapter 4, Volume 4)
and peat extraction (Chapter 7, Volume 4), but not on rewetting. In this supplement, peatlands are included alongwith organic soils and both drainage and rewetting are covered. Updated emission factors and methods are provided
for both drained and rewetted organic soils including for off-site carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions via waterborne
carbon losses. Guidance on methane (CH4) emissions from rewetting of organic soils (Chapter 3 of the Wetlands
Supplement), ditches on drained inland organic soils and CO2, CH4 and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions from peat
fires are also provided (Chapter 2 of the Wetlands Supplement).
Peatland managed for peat production. Peat production is covered in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines (Chapter 7,
Volume 4) and no additional guidance is given here except some updated emission factors in Chapter 2.
Rice cultivation. Rice cultivation is covered in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines (Chapter 5, Volume 4) and additionalemission factors for lowland rice production are given in Chapter 2.
Coastal wetlands. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines provide no specific guidance for coastal wetlands, and new guidanceis given in Chapter 4 of this supplement on how to treat anthropogenic emissions and removals associated with

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specified human activities that affect them. Coastal wetlands in this supplement include mangrove forests, tidal
marshes and seagrass meadows. Emissions factors and methodologies are provided for management of mangrove
forests (including harvesting), rewetting, revegetation and creation, aquaculture and drainage.
Inland wetland mineral soils (IWMS). The 2006 IPCC Guidelines provided limited data on soil carbon in wetland
mineral soils. Chapter 5 provides updated default soil carbon factors and covers methodologies for quantifying
emissions and removals of CO2 and emissions of CH4 from (i) artificial drainage of IWMS (ii) subsequently
rewetting of artificially drained IWMS and (iii) the artificial flooding of mineral soils for the purposes of wetland
creation. Mineral soil wetlands 5 include riparian wetlands, forested swamps and marshes and can occur in all
climate zones.
Saline inland wetlands. Saline wetlands are important parts of otherwise arid landscapes across the globe but little
information is available in the literature to assess potential greenhouse gas emissions or removals from these lands.
Thus emission or removal factors cannot be given and no guidance is provided for these wetland types. These arealso known as playas, pans, salt lakes, brackish wetlands, salinas, and sabkhas.
Constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment. The guidance supplements Volume 5 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines
on Waste (Chapter 6). These are wetlands that have been designed and constructed to use natural processes
involving vegetation, soils, and associated microbial assemblages to treat wastewater. New guidance is also
provided on semi-natural treatment wetlands.
Permanently flooded lands. No new guidance on permanently flooded lands is provided. The Expert Meeting on
HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O6 did not agree that there was sufficient new information available to produce new andadditional guidance based on the latest literature7. The IPCC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and
Mitigation of Climate Change8 also noted that it was not possible to make global estimates of the size of emissions
from reservoirs.

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Wetlands do not all have organic soils. Wetland Mineral Soils are classified as Aquic soil (USDA) or Gleysols (World
Reference Base), and are described as having restricted drainage leading to periodic flooding and anaerobic conditions(Table 2.3, Chapter 2 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines).

6

IPCC (2011) IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O. Eggleston H.S., Srivastava N., Tanabe K.,
Baasansuren J., and Fukuda M. (eds). Meeting Report of the IPCC Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O,
Geneva, Switzerland, 19-21 October, 2010, Published: IGES, Japan 2011.

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The attendees of the Expert Meeting on HWP, Wetlands and Soil N2O agreed on the need to discuss a range of issues suchas the impact of reservoirs on total emissions from watersheds, allocation of emissions to specific drivers, and how
emissions may be related to specific reservoir typologies.

8

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). Published: Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1075 pp.

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4 MANAGED LAND AND ANTHROPOGENICEMISSIONS
Parties to the UNFCCC are committed to report anthropogenic emissions and removals of greenhouse gases notcovered by the Montreal Protocol9. In practice, it is difficult to separate anthropogenic and natural emissions inAgriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use (AFOLU). Thus, the 2006 IPCC Guidelines provides that it is goodpractice to report emissions and removals from managed land as a proxy for anthropogenic emissions and removals(Pages 1.4-1.5, Chapter 1, Volume 4 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines). An expert meeting10 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 specific circumstances, there was no suitable, globally applicable
alternative to the use of managed land as a proxy for anthropogenic emissions and removals.
The Wetlands Supplement continues to use managed land as a proxy for estimation of anthropogenic emissions andremovals. The Wetlands Supplement notes that many wetlands on managed land have significant non-anthropogenic
fluxes of greenhouse gases. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines restricted managed wetlands to those lands where the watertable is artificially changed (i.e. lowered or raised). This Wetlands Supplement extends this coverage also to include
wetlands created (e.g. constructed), or where emissions and removals from coastal wetlands are attributed to
specified human activities. The focus on human activities such as drainage or construction of aquaculture ponds
maintains the justification for the managed land proxy. In the case of seagrass meadows the guidance estimatesemissions and removals associated with changes linked to a specific human activity, rather than estimating
emissions and removals from that coastal wetland type as a whole. Application of the supplement will maintainconsistency with previous estimates so long as these activities can be recognised as subsets within the broader
definition of managed land. The application of new emission factors will not introduce inconsistency so long as thehistorical time series is updated, consistent with long-standing IPCC guidance.

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UNFCCC Article 4.1 (a).
http://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/background_publications_htmlpdf/application/pdf/conveng.pdf

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IPCC 2010, Revisiting the Use of Managed Land as a Proxy for Estimating National Anthropogenic Emissions andRemovals, Eggleston H.S., Srivastava N., Tanabe K., Baasansuren J. (eds). Meeting Report, 5-7 May, 2009, INPE, SãoJosé dos Campos, Brazil, Published: IGES, Japan 2010.

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5 THE WETLANDS SUPPLEMENT AND THE 2006
IPCC GUIDELINES
The Wetlands Supplement follows the same approach to estimating emissions and removals as the 2006 IPCC
Guidelines. The 2006 IPCC Guidelines themselves are an evolutionary development starting from the 1996 IPCC
Guidelines, 2000 IPCC Good Practice Guidance (GPG2000) and Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land-use
Change and Forestry (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. An important structural change occurred in Volume 4, of the 2006 IPCC
Guidelines, which consolidated the guidance for 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 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, and provides updates where science hasadvanced, but does not replace it. This Wetlands Supplement also adds to the guidance given in Volume 5 (Waste).
Where the Wetlands Supplement provides guidance that updates emission factors for land areas, categories, gases,
and pools covered directly by Volumes 4 and 5, the guidance in the Wetlands Supplement should take precedence.
The 2006 IPCC Guidelines retained 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 with goodpractice 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 of emissions
by sources and removals by sinks, even if uncertain, are bona fide estimates, in the sense of not containing any
biases that could have been identified and eliminated.
The Wetlands Supplement, like the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, generally provides guidance, usually with decision trees,on estimation methods at three levels of detail, from Tier 1 (the default method) to Tier 3 (the most detailed method;
Chapter 1, Volume 1). The Tier 1 guidance generally consists of mathematical specification of the methods andequations for estimating emissions/removals, information on emission factors or other parameters to use ingenerating the estimates, and sources of activity data to estimate the overall level of net emissions (emission bysources minus removals by sinks). Properly implemented, all tiers are intended to provide unbiased estimates, andaccuracy and precision are expected to 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 ofemissions and removals that contribute most significantly to national emission totals and trends.
National circumstances include the availability of data and knowledge, and contribution made by the category tototal national emissions and removals and to their trend over time. The most important categories, in terms of total
national emissions and the trend, are called key categories11. The decision trees generally require Tier 2 or Tier 3
methods for key categories. This approach 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.
Within Chapter 7 of the Wetlands Supplement advice is also provided on:

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(i)

ensuring time series are consistent,(ii)

estimation of uncertainties,(iii)

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

information to be documented to achieve transparent reporting, avoiding double-counting and omissions,to facilitate review and assessment of inventory estimates, and(v)

reporting tables and worksheets for Tier 1 methods are provided as well as mapping between the
categories and guidance in the 2006 IPCC Guidelines and the changes to those introduced by the
Wetlands Supplement.

In the GPG2000 and GPG-LULUCF these were called key sources or key categories where there could be removals.

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