About the Book
Much attention has been given to above ground biomass and its potential as a carbon sink, but in a mature forest ecosystem 40 to 60 percent of the stored carbon is below ground. As increasing numbers of forests are managed in a wide diversity of climates and soils, the importance of forest soils as a potential carbon sink grows.
The Potenti
Table of Contents:
The Extent, General Characteristics, and Carbon Dynamics of U.S. Forest Soils. Soils Processes and Carbon Dynamics. Management Impacts on US Forest Soils. Specific Forest Ecosystems. Synthesis and Policy Implications.
About the Author :
John M. Kimble, Ph.D., is a research soil scientist at the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, National Soil Survey Center, in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he been for the last 21 years. Previously he was a field soil scientist in Wyoming for 3 years and an area soil scientist in California for three years. He has received the International Soil Science Award from the Soil Science Society of America. While in Lincoln, he worked on a U.S. Agency for International Development Project for 11 years, helping developing countries with their soil resources, and he remains active in international activities. For the last ten years he has focused more on global climate change and the role soils can play in this area. His scientific publications deal with topics related to soil classification, soil management, global climate change, and sustainable development. He has worked in many different ecoregions, from the Antarctic to the Arctic and all points in between. With the other editors of this book, he has led the efforts to increase the overall knowledge of soils and their relationship to global climate change. He has collaborated with Dr. Rattan Lal, Dr. Ronald Follett, and others to produce 11 books related to the role of soils in global climate change.
Linda S. Heath, Ph.D. is a research forester and project leader with the USDA Forest Service, Northeastern Research Station, in Durham, New Hampshire. For the past 10 years, she has focused on modeling carbon storage and flux of forest ecosystems of the United States, including carbon in harvested wood, and uncertainties of the system. Her estimates of forest carbon are used by the U.S. government in reporting forest carbon sinks, including forest-soil carbon, to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in its annual inventory of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions and sinks. As project leader, she supervises scientists conducting research in quantitative techniques to measure various components of forests and in understanding and modeling the forest carbon cycle. Prior to the Northeastern Research Station, she worked for 2 years as an assistant district ranger in West Virginia and for a year as a scientist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station. In addition to national-level work, she has worked on forest carbon at the regional, state, and local levels, including sustainability carbon indicators for the northeastern United States and the State of Oregon and down deadwood studies in New England.
Richard A. Birdsey, Ph.D., is the program manager for global change research at the USDA Forest Service Northeastern and North Central Forest Experiment Stations, where he has been for more than ten years. Previously he worked for 13 years as a scientist and manager with the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program of the USDA Forest Service. He received a Ph.D. degree in quantitative methods from the State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Dr. Birdsey is a specialist in quantitative methods for large-scale forest inventories and was a pioneer in the development of methods to estimate national carbon budgets for forestlands from forest inventory data. Working with Dr. Linda Heath and others, he has helped compile and publish estimates of historical and prospective U.S. forest carbon sources and sinks, and he has analyzed options for increasing the role of U.S. forests as carbon sinks. This work comprises the official estimates for the forestry sector reported by EPA and other agencies as part of the inventory of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions. He has worked with colleagues in Russia and China to develop methods to inventory and monitor forest carbon in those countries. Currently serving as program manager, Dr. Birdsey is coordinating a national effort to improve the inventory and monitoring of forest carbon to identify forest-management strategies to increase carbon sequestration, to understand and quantify the prospective impacts of climate change on U.S. forests and forest products, and to develop adaptation strategies.
Rattan Lal, Ph.D., is a professor of soil science in the School of Natural Resources at The Ohio State University. Prior to joining Ohio State in 1987, he served as a soil scientist for 18 years at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria. In Africa, Professor Lal conducted long-term experiments on soil erosion processes as influenced by rainfall characteristics, soil properties, methods of deforestation, soil-tillage and crop-residue management, cropping systems including cover crops and agroforestry, and mixed/relay cropping methods. He also assessed the impact of soil erosion on crop yield and related erosion-induced changes in soil properties to crop growth and yield. Since joining The Ohio State University in 1987, he has continued research on erosion-induced changes in soil quality and developed a new project on soils and global warming. He has demonstrated that accelerated soil erosion is a major factor affecting emission of carbon from soil to the atmosphere. Soil-erosion control and adoption of conservation-effective measures can lead to carbon sequestration and mitigation of the greenhouse effect. Professor Lal is a fellow of the Soil Science Society of America, American Society of Agronomy, Third World Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Soil and Water Conservation Society, and Indian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He is the recipient of the International Soil Science Award, the Soil Science Applied Research Award of the Soil Science Society of America, the International Agronomy Award of the American Society of Agronomy, and the Hugh Hammond Bennett Award of the Soil and Water Conservation Society. He is the recipient of an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Punjab Agricultural University, India. He is past president of the World Association of the Soil and Water Conservation and the International Soil Tillage Research Organization. He is a member of the U.S. National Committee on Soil Science of the National Academy of Sciences. He has served on the Panel on Sustainable Agriculture and the Environment in the Humid Tropics of the National Academy of Sciences.
Review :
"The chapters' organizational consistency (introduction, meaty analysis, conclusion) enhances assimilation of the abundant data gathered and clearly points to what is and is not known. Most of the concluding sections indicate what yet needs to be learned about this very dynamic process of sequestering. . . Abundant graphs, maps, and tables; very complete citation list. ^BSumming Up: Recommended."
-E.J. Kormondy, emeritus, University of Hawaii at Hilo
