OPUS: Human Modification of the Terrestrial Carbon Balance

Woodwell Climate Research Center, Inc., Falmouth MA

Investigators

Abstract

The amount of carbon released to the atmosphere as a result of deforestation (carbon source) and the amount taken up by growing forests (carbon sink) affect the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere and, hence, climate. Over the last 25 years Houghton and colleagues have calculated the exchanges of carbon between land and the atmosphere that result from land-use change, including deforestation, reforestation, wood harvest, and fire management. This proposal seeks to synthesize that work into a global framework. The work will result in two review articles and two data sets. The review articles will synthesize the uncertainties and biases in the data used to calculate carbon sources and sinks. The data sets will include, first, an annotated tabulation of rates of land-use change, carbon stocks, and annual carbon fluxes, globally, for the period 1850-2000, and, second, a series of maps indicating the location of those sources and sinks of carbon. The reviews and data sets will be of interest to students and established investigators of the global carbon/climate community, including modelers. The historic pattern as well as current emissions of carbon from land-use change are regularly referred to in assessments of the carbon cycle, such as those in the IPCC reports, and are one of the most popular data sets in the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center (CDIAC) ?Trends? report. The data sets will be made available to the scientific community through CDIAC at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The results will be very relevant to policy makers considering land-use related options for sequestering carbon.