Tools and Resources
We use some essential cookies to make this website work.
We’d like to set additional cookies to understand how you use forestresearch.gov.uk, remember your settings and improve our services.
We also use cookies set by other sites to help us deliver content from their services.
Figure 4.1 shows a forest’s contribution to the carbon cycle. Trees absorb carbon dioxide through photosynthesis and release it through respiration; the difference is new biomass. Some of this biomass is dropped to the forest floor as litter (foliage, deadwood, etc), which in due course decays and is either released back to the atmosphere or becomes part of soil carbon. The remainder accumulates as increment in the forest, mostly as stemwood, branches or roots. A proportion of this accumulated biomass is harvested, for wood products or fuelwood; the rest is a net addition to the biomass stored in the forest.
Figure 4.1 Carbon Cycle
Cookies are files saved on your phone, tablet or computer when you visit a website.
We use cookies to store information about how you use the dwi.gov.uk website, such as the pages you visit.
Find out more about cookies on forestresearch.gov.uk
We use 3 types of cookie. You can choose which cookies you're happy for us to use.
These essential cookies do things like remember your progress through a form. They always need to be on.
We use Google Analytics to measure how you use the website so we can improve it based on user needs. Google Analytics sets cookies that store anonymised information about: how you got to the site the pages you visit on forestresearch.gov.uk and how long you spend on each page what you click on while you're visiting the site
Some forestresearch.gov.uk pages may contain content from other sites, like YouTube or Flickr, which may set their own cookies. These sites are sometimes called ‘third party’ services. This tells us how many people are seeing the content and whether it’s useful.