Methodological improvements applied in the elaboration of the GHG inventory of the LULUCF sector of México for the 6th National Communication 2015

Mexico has produced six National Communications (NC) and one Biennial Update Report (BUR) submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). All of this reports has included the Green House Gas (GHG) inventory of the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) sector. By first time, the GHG inventories for the LULUCF sector reported in the 1st BUR and in the 6th NC were elaborated by the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR) in coordination with the National Institute of Ecology an Climatic Change (INECC) of Mexico. The GHG inventory for the LULUCF sector reported in the 1st BUR was reviewed by UNFCCC experts in 2015 and several suggestions were made. To elaborate the GHG inventory of the LULUCF sector for the 6th NC, CONAFOR has implemented several and important improvements following most of the suggestions made by the UNFCCC experts to the 1rst BUR. Some of the main improvements implemented include the use of better land cover maps of changes, the accuracy assessments of the land cover maps of changes, the estimation of the five carbon pools and the uncertainty propagations using numerical simulation. The improvements made have had important impacts in the emissions estimated. The emissions estimated in the 6th NC for LULUCF sector is a half of the emissions estimated in the 1rst BUR; nevertheless, the trends of the emissions of the LULUCF sector obtained for the 6 NC has changed dramatically compared with previous reports where an apparently a decreasing trends of the emissions were reported. The findings obtained in GHG inventory of the LULUCF sector for the 6ta NC, has helped to rethink the strategy to face the deforestation and degradation problem at national level, and it has to showed the necessity to improve tools to get a better monitoring of forest