The carbon cycle and land management

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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).

The atmosphere, the oceans, the Earth’s crust and its living organisms (the biosphere) are major reservoirs of carbon. These reservoirs are sometimes called carbon stores or carbon sinks.

The complex processes by which the carbon moves from one store to another are referred to as carbon fluxes.