Impacts of Climate Change on Forest Soil Carbon

Globally, forests and their soils contain a large amount of carbon and thus small changes can have significant implications for atmospheric concentrations of CO2. The balance of soil carbon is determined by the difference between inputs from fresh plant litter and losses of CO2 during decomposition. Accurately measuring and predicting what are often small and incremental changes in soil carbon is difficult. Well verified models offer one means by which to asses the effects of climate change and management but, as with all models, their limitations and strengths need to be recognised. This chapter uses examples of afforestation impacts on soil carbon as a basis for describing important processes in linked forest-soil carbon models. It then discusses some of the uncertainties in models and challenges in assessing the impacts of climate change.