ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a data which explores that when examining global carbon budgets, the cold temperate and tropical climatic zones had the greatest potential to sequester carbon compared to the other climatic zones. Forest ecosystems are frequently ranked along natural climatic-zone groupings for comparisons of structure and function. When comparing forests in tropical, temperate and boreal zones using only climatic life-zone groupings, clear predictive patterns of soil organic matter (SOM) accumulation do not typically exist. An approach that has been used to examine SOM dynamics is to group the data using soil order as a common denominator. Changes in SOM accumulation over time can be estimated using a series of different aged stands dominated by the same overstory species. This approach suggests that SOM accumulates at low rates under natural conditions and may be quite stable over long-time scales suggesting an inherent site capacity to store carbon.
