Soil carbon sequestration and forest management: challenges and opportunities.

The subject of the effects of forest management activities on soil carbon is a difficult one to address, but ongoing discussions of carbon sequestration as an emissions offset and the emergence of carbon-credit-trading systems necessitate that we broaden and deepen our understanding of the response of forest-soil carbon pools to forest management. There have been several reviews of the literature, but hard-and-fast conclusions are still difficult to draw, since many of the studies reviewed were not designed specifically to address management effects on soil carbon, were conducted on a short timescale, and differ in the methodology employed.