Why be concerned with defining how much carbon can be sequestered and stored in land?
Defining storage is necessary to both the emerging carbon offsets market and (perhaps, eventually) the carbon dioxide emissions market. One of the main reasons the July, 2001 agreement became possible was the European Union’s agreement to give credit to Japan for carbon stored in forests due to management practices since 1990, so storage is clearly a substantive issue. Any kind of human induced changes in cropland, forest and grazing land since 1990 will be counted in part toward meeting emissions reductions (see the Details, requires Acrobat Reader).
