Interim Reports on work of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis receive only limited review. Views or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the Institute, its National Member Organizations, or other organizations supporting the work. Abstract After the inclusion of carbon sinks in the Kyoto Protocol, greenhouse gas mitigation policies account for ab...

Carbon has been described as a ‘surreal commodity.’ While carbon trading, storage, sequestration, and emissions have become a part of the contemporary climate lexicon, how carbon is understood, valued, and interpreted by actors responsible for implementing carbon sequestration projects is still unclear. In this review paper, we are concerned with how carbon has come to take on a range of meanin...

Relative Permeability Experiments of Carbon Dioxide Displacing Brine & Their Implications for Carbon Sequestration

Seaweed has the ability to use carbon from the environment through photosynthesis to produce biomass. The aim of this study is to estimate carbon sequestration by seaweed aquaculture as a strategy for climate change mitigation. The study was undertaken at Gerupuk Bay, Lombok Island, West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. Four seaweed variants, such as Kappaphycus alvarezii var. Tambalang and M...

Afforestation has been proposed as a climate change mitigation strategy by sequestrating atmospheric carbon dioxide. With the goal of increasing carbon sequestration, a Congressional project has been planned to afforest about 18 million acres by 2020 in the Southeast United States (SEUS), the Great Lake states, and the Corn Belt states. However, biophysical feedbacks of afforestation have the p...

The reduction in CO2 emissions is very important, as highlighted by the issue of global climate warming. As a developing country, China has great differences in regional economic development, which makes it necessary to implement the ecological compensation of regional carbon emissions to coordinate the relationship between regional economic development and environmental protection. Using the e...

The vertical separation of organic matter formation from respiration can lead to net carbon sequestration within the ocean’s interior, making the biological pump an important component of the global carbon cycle. Understanding the response of the biological pump to the changing environment is a prerequisite to predicting future atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Will the biological pump...

Globally, 15.5 million km(2) of land are currently identified as protected areas, which provide society with many ecosystem services including climate-change mitigation. Combining a global database of protected areas, a reconstruction of global land-use history, and a global biogeochemistry model, we estimate that protected areas currently sequester 0.5 Pg C annually, which is about one fifth o...

This report is being written for the Carbon Sequestration Initiative at the request of two members, GM and ChevronTexaco. The purpose is to give a brief overview and assessment of carbon sequestration by mineral carbonation (referred to as “mineral sequestration” in this report). The assessment is to highlight areas that need development in order for this technology to become commercial, not to...

Root system architecture (RSA) describes the dynamic spatial configuration of different types and ages of roots in a plant, which allows adaptation to different environments. Modifications in RSA enhance agronomic traits in crops and have been implicated in soil organic carbon content. Together, these fundamental properties of RSA contribute to the net carbon balance and overall sustainability ...