The world’s forests play a pivotal role in the mitigation of global climate change. By photosynthesis they remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store carbon in their biomass. While old trees are generally acknowledged for a long carbon residence time, there is no consensus on their contribution to carbon accumulation due to a lack of long-term individual tree data. Tree ring analyses, which use anatomical differences in the annual formation of wood for dating growth zones, are a retrospective approach that provides growth patterns of individual trees over their entire lifetime.

Ever increasing power demand coupled with CO2 emission from coal-based power plants is a critical challenge for worldwide energy sector. This is even more critical for a country like India where a large coal reserve exists and about 60% of the total power produced is from coal. Meeting energy demand and simultaneously satisfying CO2 emissions target, India has to develop power from coal using more advanced technology than existing subcritical pulverized coal fired one. IGCC with CO2 capture emerges as a prospective option for using coal with reduced CO2 emissions.

Ecosystem carbon carrying capacity (CCC) is determined by prevailing climate and natural disturbance regimes, conditions that are projected to change significantly. The interaction of changing climate and its effects on disturbance regimes is expected to affect forest regeneration and growth, which may diminish forest carbon (C) stocks and uptake. We modeled landscape C dynamics over 590 years along the latitudinal gradient of the U.S. Sierra Nevada Mountains under climate and area burned by large wildfires projected by late 21st century.