Carbon Fluxes From Land-Use Change and Forestry: A Multi-Model Study

Abstract

The impact of land-use change and land management on global carbon fluxes is assessed using a variety of models of different types with different land cover change maps. Annual carbon fluxes are disaggregated into different land-use change processes and carbon pools in separate geographical regions. Biogeochemical modeling studies estimate the impacts of CO2 fertilization and climate change in addition to land use change but did not include some activities which are considered in book-keeping approaches. We perform a detailed analysis for USA. The USA is chosen because of the disparity between the detailed UNFCCC estimates and the model-based estimates. Major differences between different data sets are found in the litter and soil organic matter components for the USA, although the differences are much smaller than those in the tropics. Combining the book-keeping modeling results with the process-based biogeochemical modeling estimates yields a consensus of bottom-up and top-down estimates. Our results indicate that extra-tropical land regions are net weak sink of carbon and the tropics are net small source in the 1990s.

Department

Earth Sciences, Earth Systems Research Center

Publication Date

12-2007

Journal Title

EOS, Transactions American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting, Supplement

Publisher

American Geophysical Union Publications

Document Type

Conference Proceeding

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