POOLS, FLUXES AND A WORD ABOUT UNITS

In order to understand how carbon is cycled and how atmospheric CO2 will change in the
future, scientists must carefully study the places in which carbon is stored (pools), how long
it resides there, and processes that transfer it from one pool to another (fluxes).  Collectively,
all of the major pools and fluxes of carbon on Earth comprise what we refer to as the global
carbon cycle. 

As you might imagine, the actual global carbon cycle is immensely complex.  It includes
every plant, animal and microbe, every photosynthesizing leaf and fallen tree, every ocean,
lake, pond and puddle, every soil, sediment and carbonate rock, every breath of fresh air,
volcanic eruption and bubble rising to the surface of a swamp, among much, much else. 
Because we can't deal with that level of complexity, scientists often describe the carbon cycle
by lumping similar objects or environments into simpler groups (forest, grassland,
atmosphere, ocean) and focusing only on the processes that are most important at the global
scale  (see Global Carbon Cycle Diagram).  As you might imagine, part of the trick is
understanding just what those processes are. 

The following section is a brief overview of some of the important pools and fluxes in the
global carbon cycle (and note that, in our discussion, we will use the terms pool, stock and
reservoir interchangeably).  But first, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the numbers and
units scientists often deal with.  Because the quantities of carbon in the Earth’s major carbon
pools can be quite large, it is inconvenient to use familiar units such as pounds or kilograms. 
Instead, we use other units that are better suited for expressing large numbers. For example, a
Petagram of carbon (Pg), also known as a Gigaton (Gt), is equal to 10^15 grams or one
billion tonnes.  A tonne, also known as a metric ton, is equal to one thousand kilograms
(1,000 kg).  Because one kilogram is equal to 2.205 pounds, one metric tonne is the same as
2205 pounds.  Taking this further, we can see that one Petagram is equal to just about
2,200,000,000,000 (or 2.2 trillion) pounds!  Expressing this as 1 Pg is much simpler than
working with that many zeros.  Now we will consider carbon stored on Earth in four main
reservoirs. 
 
CARBON POOLS

Depending on our goals, the Earth’s carbon pools can be grouped into any number of
different categories.  Here, we will consider four categories that have the greatest relevance to
the overall carbon cycle.  Keep in mind that any of these pools could be further divided into a
number of subcategories, as we will occasionally discuss. 

The Earth’s Crust: The largest amount of carbon on Earth is stored in sedimentary rocks
within the planet’s crust.  These are rocks produced either by the hardening of mud
(containing organic matter) into shale over geological time, or by the collection of calcium
carbonate particles, from the shells and skeletons of marine organisms, into limestone and
other carbon-containing sedimentary rocks.  Together all sedimentary rocks on Earth store
100,000,000 PgC. Recalling that 1 Pg is over two trillion pounds, this is clearly a large mass
of carbon!  Another 4,000 PgC is stored in the Earth’s crust as hydrocarbons formed over
millions of years from ancient living organisms under intense temperature and pressure. 
These hydrocarbons are commonly known as fossil fuels.  

Oceans:  The Earth’s oceans contain 38,000 PgC, most of which is in the form of dissolved
inorganic carbon stored at great depths where it resides for long periods of time.  A much
smaller amount of carbon, approximately 1,000 Pg, is located near the ocean surface.  This
carbon is exchanged rapidly with the atmosphere through both physical processes, such as
CO2 gas dissolving into the water, and biological processes, such as the growth, death and
decay of plankton.  Although most of this surface carbon cycles rapidly, some of it can also
be transferred by sinking to the deep ocean pool where it can be stored for a much longer
time.

Atmosphere: The atmosphere contains approximately 750 PgC, most of which is in the form
of CO2, with much smaller amounts of methane (CH4 and various other compounds). 
Although this is considerably less carbon than that contained in the oceans or crust, carbon in
the atmosphere is of vital importance because of its influence on the greenhouse effect and
climate.  The relatively small size of the atmospheric C pool also makes it more sensitive to
disruptions caused by and increase in sources or sinks of C from the Earth’s other pools.  In
fact, the present-day value of 750 PgC is substantially higher than that which occurred before
the onset of fossil fuel combustion and deforestation.  Before these activities began, the
atmosphere contained approximately 560 PgC and this value is believed to be the normal
upper limit for the Earth under natural conditions.  In the context of global pools and fluxes,
the increase that has occurred in the past several centuries is the result of C fluxes to the
atmosphere from the crust (fossil fuels) and terrestrial ecosystems (via deforestation and other
forms of land clearing).

Terrestrial Ecosystems: Terrestrial ecosystems contain carbon in the form of plants, animals,

soils and microorganisms (bacteria and fungi).  Of these, plants and soils are by far the largest
and, when dealing with the entire globe, the smaller pools are often ignored.  Unlike the
Earth’s crust and oceans, most of the carbon in terrestrial ecosystems exists in organic forms. 
In this context, the term “organic” refers to compounds that were produced by living things,
including leaves, wood, roots, dead plant material and the brown organic matter in soils
(which is the decomposed remains of formerly living tissues). 

Plants exchange carbon with the atmosphere relatively rapidly through photosynthesis, in
which CO2 is absorbed and converted into new plant tissues, and respiration, where some
fraction of the previously captured CO2 is released back to the atmosphere as a product of
metabolism.  Of the various kinds of tissues produced by plants, woody stems such as those
produced by trees have the greatest ability to store large amounts of carbon.  Wood is dense
and trees can be large.  Collectively, the Earth’s plants store approximately 560 PgC, with the
wood in trees being the largest fraction. 

The total amount of carbon in the world’s soils is estimated to be 1500 PgC. Measuring soil
carbon can be challenging, but a few basic assumptions can make estimating it much easier. 
First, the most prevalent form of carbon in the soil is organic carbon derived from dead plant
materials and microorganisms.  Second, as soil depth increases the abundance of organic
carbon decreases.  Standard soil measurements are typically only taken to 1m in depth.  In
most case, this captures the dominant fraction of carbon in soils, although some environments
have very deep soils where this rule doesn’t apply.  Most of the carbon in soils enters in the
form of dead plant matter that is broken down by microorganisms during decay.  The decay
process also released carbon back to the atmosphere because the metabolism of these
microorganisms eventually breaks most of the organic matter all the way down to CO2. 

CARBON FLUXES

The movement of any material from one place to another is called a flux and we typically
think of a carbon flux as a transfer of carbon from one pool to another.  Fluxes are usually
expressed as a rate with units of an amount of some substance being transferred over a certain
period of time (e.g. g cm-2 s-1 or kg km2 yr-1).  For example, the flow of water in a river can
be thought of as a flux that transfers water from the land to the sea and can be measured in
gallons per minute or cubic kilometers per year. 

A single carbon pool can often have several fluxes both adding and removing carbon
simultaneously.  For example, the atmosphere has inflows from decomposition (CO2 released
by the breakdown of organic matter), forest fires and fossil fuel combustion and outflows
from plant growth and uptake by the oceans.  The size of various fluxes can vary widely.  In
the previous section, we briefly discussed a few of the fluxes into and out of various global C
pools.  Here, we will pay more careful attention to some of the more important C fluxes. 

Photosynthesis: During photosynthesis, plants use energy from sunlight to combine CO2

from the atmosphere with water from the soil to create carbohydrates (notice that the two
parts of the word, carbo- and –hydrate, signify carbon and water).  In this way, CO2 is
removed from the atmosphere and stored in the structure of plants.  Virtually all of the
organic matter on Earth was initially formed through this process.  Because some plants can
live to be tens, hundreds or sometimes even thousands of years old (in the case of the longest-
living trees),  carbon may be stored, or sequestered, for relatively long periods of time.  When
plants die, their tissues remain for a wide range of time periods.  Tissues such as leaves, which
have a high quality for decomposer organisms, tend to decay quickly, while more resistant
structures, such as wood can persist much longer.  Current estimates suggest photosynthesis
removes 120 PgC/year from the atmosphere and about 610 PgC is stored in plants at any
given time.

Plant Respiration: Plants also release CO2 back to the atmosphere through the process of
respiration (the plant equivalent of exhaling).  Respiration occurs as plant cells use
carbohydrates, made during photosynthesis, for energy.  Plant respiration represents
approximately half (60 PgC/year) of the CO2 that is returned to the atmosphere in the
terrestrial portion of the carbon cycle.

Litterfall:  In addition to the death of whole plants, living plants also shed some portion of
their leaves, roots and branches each year.  Because all parts of the plant are made up of
carbon, the loss of these parts to the ground is a transfer of carbon (a flux) from the plant to
the soil.  Dead plant material is often referred to as litter (leaf litter, branch litter, etc.) and
once on the ground, all forms of litter will begin the process of decomposition.

Soil Respiration: The release of CO2 through respiration is not unique to plants, but is
something all organisms do.  When dead organic matter is broken down or decomposed
(consumed by bacteria and fungi), CO2 is released into the atmosphere at an average rate of
about 60 PgC/year globally.  Because it can take years for a plant to decompose (or decades
in the case of large trees), carbon is temporarily stored in the organic matter of soil.

Ocean—Atmosphere exchange: Inorganic carbon is absorbed and released at the interface of

the oceans’ surface and surrounding air, through the process of diffusion.  It may not seem
obvious that gasses can be dissolved into, or released from water, but this is what leads to the
formation of bubbles that appear in a glass of water left to sit for a long enough period of
time.  The air contained in those bubbles includes CO2 and this same process is the first step
in the uptake of carbon by oceans.  Once in a dissolved form, CO2 goes on to react with
water in what are known as the carbonate reactions.  These are relatively simple chemical
reactions in which H2O and CO2 join to form H2CO3 (also known as carbonic acid, the
anion of which, CO3, is called carbonate).  The formation of carbonate in seawater allows
oceans to take up and store a much larger amount of carbon than would be possible if
dissolved CO2 remained in that form.  Carbonate is also important to a vast number of
marine organisms that use this mineral form of carbon to build shells. 

Carbon is also cycled through the ocean by the biological processes of photosynthesis,
respiration, and decomposition of aquatic plants.  In contrast with terrestrial vegetation is the
speed at which marine organisms decompose.  Because ocean plants don’t have large, woody
trunks that take years to breakdown, the process happens much more quickly in oceans than
on land—often in a matter of days.  For this reason, very little carbon is stored in the ocean
through biological processes.  The total amount of carbon uptake (92 Pg C) and carbon loss
(90 PgC) from the ocean is dependent on the balance of organic and inorganic processes.

Fossil fuel combustion and land cover change:  The carbon fluxes discussed thus far involve
natural processes that have helped regulate the carbon cycle and atmospheric CO2 levels for
millions of years.  However, the modern-day carbon cycle also includes several important
fluxes that stem from human activities.  The most important of these is combustion of fossil
fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.  These materials contain carbon that was captured by living
organisms over periods of millions of years and has been stored in various places within the
Earth's crust (see accompanying text box).  However, since the onset of the industrial
revolution, these fuels have been mined and combusted at increasing rates and have served as
a primary source of the energy that drives modern industrial human civilization.  Because the
main byproduct of fossil fuel combustion is CO2, these activities can be viewed in geological
terms as a new and relatively rapid flux to the atmosphere of large amounts of carbon.  At
present, fossil fuel combustion represents a flux to the atmosphere of approximately 6-8
PgC/year. 

Another human activity that has caused a flux of carbon to the atmosphere is land cover
change, largely in the form of deforestation.  With the expansion of the human population
and growth of human settlements, a considerable amount of the Earth's land surface has been
converted from native ecosystems to farms and urban areas.  Native forests in many areas
have been cleared for timber or burned for conversion to farms and grasslands.  Because
forests and other native ecosystems generally contain more carbon (in both plant tissues and
soils) than the cover types they have been replaced with, these changes have resulted in a net
flux to the atmosphere of about 1.5 PgC/year.  In some areas, regrowth of forests from past
land clearing activities can represent a sink of carbon (as in the case of forest growth
following farm abandonment in eastern North America), but the net effect of all human-
induced land cover conversions globally represents a source to the atmosphere. 

Geological Processes: Geological processes represent an important control on the Earth's

carbon cycle over time scales of hundreds of millions of years.  A thorough discussion of the
geological carbon cycle is beyond the scope of this introduction, but the processes involved
include the formation of sedimentary rocks and their recycling via plate tectonics, weathering
and volcanic eruptions. 

To take a slightly closer look, rocks on land are broken down by the atmosphere, rain, and
groundwater into small particles and dissolved materials, a process known as weathering. 
These materials are combined with plant and soil particles that result from decomposition and
surface erosion and are later carried to the ocean where the larger particles are deposited near
shore.  Slowly, these sediments accumulate, burying older sediments below.  The layering of
sediment causes pressure to build and eventually becomes so great that deeper sediments are
turned into rock, such as shale.  Within the ocean water itself, dissolved materials mix with
seawater and are used by marine life to make calcium carbonate (CaCO3) skeletons and
shells.  When these organisms die, their skeletons and shells sink to the bottom of the ocean. 
In shallow waters (less than 4km) the carbonate collects and eventually forms another type of
sedimentary rock called limestone. 

Collectively, these processes convert carbon that was initially contained in living organisms
into sedimentary rocks within the Earth's crust.  Once there, these materials continue to be
moved and transformed through the process of plate tectonics, uplift of rocks contained in the
lighter plates and melting of rocks in the heavier plates as they are pushed deep under the
surface.  These melted materials can eventually result in emission of gaseous carbon back to
the atmosphere through volcanic eruptions, thereby completing the cycle.  Although the
recycling of carbon through sedimentary rocks is vital to our planet's long-term ability to
sustain life, the geological cycle moves so slowly that these fluxes are small on an annual
basis and have little effect on a human time-scale.