The carbon cycle and land management 2009-02-04T01:02:55Z 2009-02-05T21:27:04Z The carbon cycle and land management Communicating Climate Change - Module 7 <p>The carbon in living organisms and in the products derived from them has been absorbed from the atmosphere. It is returned to the atmosphere by a number of processes that occur over different time periods. We call this the carbon cycle (Figure 1).</p> <p>The atmosphere, the oceans, the Earth&rsquo;s crust and its living organisms (the biosphere) are major reservoirs of carbon. These reservoirs are sometimes called <strong>carbon stores</strong> or <strong>carbon sinks</strong>.</p> <p>The complex processes by which the carbon moves from one store to another are referred to as <strong>carbon fluxes</strong>.</p> PN22195 PN22195