Carbon Cycling in Wetland Forest Soils
Abstract
Wetlands comprise a small proportion (i.e., 2 to 3%) of earth's terrestrial surface, yet they contain a significant proportion of the terrestrial carbon (C) pool. Soils comprise the largest terrestrial C pool (ca. 1550 Pg C in upper 100 cm; Eswaran et al., 1993; Batjes, 1996), and wetlands contain the single largest component, with estimates ranging between 18 and 30% of the total soil C. In addition to being an important C pool, wetlands contribute approximately 22% of the annual global methane emissions (Bartlett and Harris, 1993; Matthews and Fung, 1987). Despite the importance of wetlands in the global C budget, they are typically omitted from large-scale assessments because of scale, inadequate models, and limited information on C turnover and temporal dynamics.