Carbon storage and greenhouse gas emission

Managing our land to retain carbon in the vegetation, trees and soils is important if we are to achieve agreed national targets for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon is the main constituent of all organic matter and is essential to all life processes (the food of life). There are two key elements to the carbon bio-cycle; that which is changing the nature and amount of carbon stored in soil and vegetation and that which is modifying the flux of carbon between air, water, soil and biota.

Scottish soils  have for millennia accumulated an important soil carbon reserve in our peat and other organic soils, equivalent to more than half of all the UK terrestrial carbon stock. This natural carbon reserve is continuously growing in healthy peatland ecosystems.

In the context of climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, it is important to retain as much of these natural stores as possible, and to limit the loss of carbon to the atmosphere (i.e. as carbon dioxide, methane) and to watercourses (i.e. as dissolved and particulate organic carbon).

• Carbon resources - How much is there and where is it?
• How to increase soil organic carbon storage
• How to reduce greenhouse gas and carbon loss