Forestat: An R Package for Computing Forest Carbon Sequestration and Potential Productivity

1. Forest ecosystem is a basic component of terrestrial ecosystems that mitigate the impacts of climate change by absorbing significant amounts of carbon dioxide. This element is crucial in maintaining ecological equilibrium, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and preserving biodiversity. Thus, standardised, accurate and precise methodologies for measuring forest carbon sequestration and assessing its potential are foundational in evaluating the impacts of climate change on carbon equilibrium.2. We presented Forestat, an approach for assessing forest carbon sequestration and its potential based on annual growth of biomass, considering site class and forest age conditions, wrapped in an R package, and it was applicable to all forest types. By using a comprehensive system of forest stand models, this methodology contributes to a refined comprehension of the relationships between forest biomass and carbon sequestration and offers a comprehensive evaluation of the carbon sequestration potential in forest ecosystems, unifying the methods of carbon sequestration measurement and potential calculation in natural forest and artificial forest.3. Based on the two application, we (a) introduced and demonstrated the methods in R package Forestat; (b) used the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th National Forest Inventory data to investigate carbon sequestration and potential productivity of degraded forests in China; and (c) conducted a suitability analysis for tree species in the Yellow River Basin.4. Forestat provides a unified, efficient, and standardized analytical tool for forest carbon sequestration and potential. We highlighted its primary forest functionalities.