Until recently, scientists were uncertain about how much
and where in the world terrestrial carbon is being stored. In the July
14 issue of Science Express, scientists report that, between 1990 and
2007, the world's forests stored about 2.4 gigatons of carbon per year.
Their results suggest that forests account for almost all of the
world's land-based carbon uptake. Boreal forests are estimated to be
responsible for 22 percent of the carbon stored in the forests. A
warming climate has the potential to increase fires and insect damage in
the boreal forest and reduce its capacity to sequester carbon.
"Our results imply that clearly, forests play a critical role in
Earth's terrestrial carbon balance, and exert considerable control over
the evolution of atmospheric carbon dioxide," said A. David McGuire,
co-author and professor of ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks
Institute of Arctic Biology and co-leader of the USGS Alaska
Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit.
The report includes comprehensive estimates of carbon for the world's
forests based on recent inventory data. The scientists included
information on changes in carbon pools from dead wood, harvested wood
products, living plants and plant litter, and soils to estimate changes
in carbon across countries, regions and continents that represent
boreal, temperate and tropical forests.
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