Global Change Management (M.Sc.), Forestry System Transformation (M.Sc)
Carbon Sequestration and Accounting (teaching unit: Soil Science)
Goal: Students understand the carbon cycle with special reference to forests, soils and forest products. They are qualified to develop and critically reflect forest growth scenarios and have acquired basic knowledge of the purpose and the implementation of life cycle analysis (LCA), product carbon footprints (PCF) and corporate carbon footprints (CCF).
Content (soil science): The fundamentals of the global carbon cycle will be given. The interactions among vegetation, climate, soil organisms and soil properties as main factors influencing soil carbon storage will be explained. In terms of carbon sequestration the current EU-wide programs for observing and monitoring the element budget in forest ecosystems are presented. An overview of global threats to soils in particular by loss of humus and measures for soil protection will be given. In a field study typical forest soils will be described and soil sampling methods applied in the Germany-wide forest soil assessment will be demonstrated. Using data-sets of the National Forest Soil Inventory students will calculate carbon stocks and discuss differences between various soil types (--> work report).