The objective of this study is to provide improved estimation of the area extent for major mire types within West Siberia (WS) and determine the spatial variability of NPP and biomass in relation to macro/micro landscape and site position within the bioclimatic division. Our approach relies upon scaling up available field survey and literature data to provide wetland net primary production (NPP) and biomass inventory maps for West Siberia. Both, satellite images and aerial photography classifications have been used to extrapolate site data into a regional inventory map (1:2.5M scale). Total NPP of wetlands is estimated as 530.5 TgDM (teragram/megaton dry matter)yr^-1, or 624.4 TgDM/yr when woody parts are included. Lowest NPP has been assigned to wetlands at the northern part of Taiga zone (4.5-6.2 tonDM)/ha/yr^-1). Wetlands in Tundra, Forested tundra and southern parts of Taiga zone show considerably higher NPP values. Minimum of living biomass storage was found in middle and southern taiga subzones. It is also increased to the north and south within West Siberian territory.

In this study, soil CO₂ effluxes determined from CO₂ concentration gradients were compared to effluxes obtained with automated chamber measurements. The CO₂ concentrations showed a diurnal pattern following the soil temperature the concentrations increasing with increasing soil depth. Both methods gave comparable CO₂ effluxes indicating that the gradient method provides an alternative method for monitoring soil CO₂ effluxes.

Based on satellite imagery for the 1988s and 2001s, land-use/cover change and associated carbon stock and flux as a result of changes were estimated in Mamlay watershed of Sikkim Himalaya, India. The total area of forest was decreased by 28%, whereas open cropped area increased by more than 100%. The conversion of forests into other land-uses resulted in a remarkable decline in the C densities. Across the land-use/cover, total mean C densities ranged from 46 t ha^-1 in open cropped area temperate to a high of 669 t ha^-1 in temperate natural dense forest. The heavily converted areas lost an estimated 55% of their total 1988 C pools, whereas the low impacted area lost only 0.12%. Changes in land-use released 7.78 tC ha^-1 yr^-1, demonstrating that land-use changes significantly affected C flux. Therefore, the conversion of forest to agriculture land should be reversed.

We report measurements of energy and carbon fluxes from a boreal forest fire chronosequence. Taking into account greenhouse gas emissions and post-fire changes in the surface radiation budget, a boreal forest fire in interior Alaska caused the climate to cool. This result suggests that management of forests in northern countries to preserve carbon sinks may have the opposite effect on climate as that intended.

Annual changes in soil carbon stock are considered of the abandoned managed agricultural lands that were under natural regrowth over the territory of Russia within the period 1990-2002. Total area of abandoned agricultural land is 21,6 millions ha. The projections of changes in the carbon stock have been made for the period from present to 2010. The ROTHC model was employed in the investigation of carbon dynamics in soils. The territory of Russia was subdivided into 40 regions. The average basic soil and climatic parameters, as well as the annual input of organic matter into soils due to natural succession were estimated for each region. Average annual net-emission over the territory of abandoned lands was 2,1 ± 1,8 Tg C/yr in 1990-1999. CO₂ removal from the atmosphere by soils was 5,2 ± 2,8 Tg C/yr on average in 2000-2002. A total increase in carbon stock of the abandoned lands over the country can be as high as 153 Tg C (that corresponds to the removal of 561 Tg of CO₂ from the atmosphere) in 2010. Central regions of the European part of Russia, south of East Siberia and the Far East will have the highest intensity of carbon sequestration.

Year-to-year variations in summer drawdown of northern hemisphere atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) are compared with corresponding year-to-year variations in sea- level pressure (SLP), surface air temperature and the productivity of land vegetation as inferred from the satellite-derived normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Annual values of CO₂ drawdown for the years 1980-2000 are estimated from smoothed time series derived directly from individual flask samples at the 9 northern hemisphere monitoring stations with the most continuous records. The leading principal component of the 9 standardized drawdown time series, in which all stations exhibit positive loadings, is used to represent the hemispheric signal in the CO₂ drawdown. Linear regression analysis is used to infer the spatial patterns of anomalies in sea level pressure, surface air temperature and the NDVI observed during various seasons of years in which the drawdown is anomalously strong.

Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute erected a CO₂ flux observation tower at a Japanese beech forest, and have measured CO₂ flux with closed-pass eddy covariance method for 5 years. During the observation period, 2003 was the most CO₂ absorbed year, and the amount was 1.9 times larger than 2004, which was the least CO₂ absorbed year. To investigate the cause of the smaller CO₂ absorption in 2004, we referred some meteorological factors in 2003 and 2004.  Solar radiation (during green-leaved season) was larger in 2004 than 2003, in contradiction to CO₂ absorption.  On the other, air temperature was higher in 2004 than 2003 (both in green-leaved and defoliated season). We assumed that larger respiration in 2004 effected the depression of annual CO₂ absorption.  At our research site, annual mean air temperature in 2004 was 0.95 degree centigrade warmer than 2003.  The result of this study suggests the tendency that warmer climate may cause less CO₂ absorption in this Japanese beech forest.

Better quantification of atmosphere-ecosystem exchange of the isotopologues of CO₂ could substantially improve our ability to probe under­lying physiological and ecological mechanisms controlling ecosystem carbon exchange, but the ability to make long-term continuous measurements of the isotopic composition of exchange fluxes has been limited by measure­ment difficulties. Quantum cascade (QC) lasers are a new generation of infrared light sources that offer increased stability and power for absorption spectroscopy applications (including the measurement of isotope ratios in atmospheric CO₂) and promise substantial improvements over existing instruments: smaller size, increased robustness, and most significantly for remote or long-term field deployments, no need for cryogenic cooling of laser or detectors. 

Amazonian forests play an important and complex role in the global carbon cycle, contributing substantially to increases (via land use change emissions) and possibly to net sequestration (in intact forests) of atmospheric CO₂. Predicting these processes of net carbon uptake and release depends crucially on understanding ecosystem response to both seasonal and interannual variations. However, prominent ecosystem modeling studies of the Amazonian carbon cycle [Tian et al., 1998; Botta 2002] appear to make seasonal predictions (wet-season carbon uptake and dry-season loss) at odds with both some site-specific observations (which show the opposite pattern, Saleska et al., [2003]) and basin-wide satellite observations (which imply large-scale increases in the activity of photosynthetic vegetation during the dry season, Huete et al., [2005]).