There is growing support for characterizing ecosystem services in order to link conservation and human well-being. However, few studies have explicitly included ecosystem services within systematic conservation planning, and those that have follow two fundamentally different approaches: ecosystem services as intrinsically-important targeted benefits vs. substitutable co-benefits. We present a first comparison of these two approaches in a case study in the Central Interior of British Columbia.

Nitrogen (N) limits the productivity of many ecosystems worldwide, thereby restricting the ability of terrestrial ecosystems to offset the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 emissions naturally. Understanding input pathways of bioavailable N is therefore paramount for predicting carbon (C) storage on land, particularly in temperate and boreal forests. Paradigms of nutrient cycling and limitation posit that new N enters terrestrial ecosystems solely from the atmosphere. Here we show that bedrock comprises a hitherto overlooked source of ecologically available N to forests.

Accurate and realistic estimates of carbon stock on trees are essentially required for determining their role in mitigating global warming and climate change in present scenario of enhanced atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) coupled with the rise in temperature. In this background, a study was conducted at National Research Centre for Agroforestry, Jhansi to assess carbon sequestration potential and its allocation in different tree-components of eight important agroforestry tree species of Bundelkhand region in Central India.

Afforestation, the conversion of croplands or marginal lands into forests, results in the sequestration of carbon. As a result, afforestation is considered one of the key climate-change mitigation strategies available to governments by the United Nations. However, forests are also less reflective than croplands, and the absorption of incoming solar radiation is greater over afforested areas. Afforestation can therefore result in net climate warming, particularly at high latitudes.

The majority of carbon sequestration at the Earth’s surface occurs in marine continental margin settings within fine-grained sediments whose mineral properties are a function of continental climatic conditions.

Changes in forest carbon stocks are a determinant of the regional carbon budget. In the past several decades, China has experienced a pronounced increase in forest area and density. However, few comprehensive analyses have been conducted.