A review of approaches to assess the amount of carbon stored in ecosystems over time

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Carbon storage and carbon sequestration contribute to human well-being because they represent the capacity of ecosystems to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it for long-time periods, thus mitigating climate change.

Read this open access paper on the FACETS website.

Here, we provide a summary of methods used to assess carbon storage and sequestration over time. These methods can be grouped into four categories: Field-based Approaches, Stratify & Multiply Approaches, Direct Remote Sensing Approaches, and Mass Balance Approaches.

Field-based Approaches rely on directly measuring carbon in the field (e.g., by collecting a sample of soil and determining the amount of carbon within that sample).

Stratify & Multiply Approaches rely on land cover maps, which partition a landscape into different land cover types (e.g., forests, crops, wetlands). These land cover maps are then multiplied by the average amount of carbon stored within each land cover class.

Direct Remote Sensing Approaches relate field measurements of carbon to remotely sensed data (e.g., images of the earth taken from satellites). Extrapolation outside of where the field measurements were collected allows for continuous estimation of carbon across space.

Mass Balance Approaches model key carbon pools and flows between them, for example by tracking carbon flows from the atmosphere to a tree as forests grow.

We discuss the strengths, limitations, and best practices of each approach to aid researchers and decision-makers in selecting an approach, carbon dataset, or carbon assessment tool that is most useful for a given application.

Accurate assessments of carbon are important to ensure governments are meeting their emission reduction targets to mitigate climate change.

Read the paper — A comparison of approaches to quantify carbon for ecosystem service assessments through time by Amanda M. Schwantes, Carina Rauen Firkowski, Peter S. Rodriguez, Andrew Gonzalez, and Marie-Josée Fortin.