Forest carbon storage: ecology, management, and policy

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org E of the principal greenhouse gas (GHG), carbon dioxide (CO2), are driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, but the Earth’s biosphere also plays a major role in the global carbon (C) budget. Forest biomes are an important component of the global C budget, because of the large quantities stored in live biomass, detritus, and soil organic matter, and because forest conversion to other land uses releases C to the atmosphere. Globally, terrestrial ecosystems are currently a major net sink for atmospheric CO2 (about 1 gigaton C per year); this sink mostly represents the difference between C accumulation in forests and CO2 emissions from tropical deforestation (Canadell and Raupach 2008). Particular forest landscapes can be either net C sources or net C sinks, depending on their management and dynamics. Forests can therefore play an important role in regulating the future rate of increase of atmospheric CO2, and management of forests for this purpose is receiving increased attention from national and global policy makers. In this paper, we summarize the key processes of forest C storage and flux and how forest management and land-use activities affect these processes. We review the existing policy framework for forest C management, current approaches for quantifying forest C, and prospects for expanding forest C abatement in the future. We hope that this contribution will help to inform scientists, educators, and policy makers about the role of forest and C storage in global climate change mitigation.