U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, General Technical Report RM-234, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Carbon changes in U.S. forests. Productivity of America's forests and climate change. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, General Technical Report RM-271, Rocky Mountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. Live flux includes understory and trees.
Dead flux includes forest floor and soil.
A positive number indicates that the forest is sequestering more carbon than it is emitting to the atmosphere. Carbon in wood harvested from forests ends up in a variety of uses, from bring sequestered in lumber in buildings or furniture for a century or more, to quickly being released into the atmosphere as logging debris is burned in preparation for planting. Carbon in historical removals was estimated beginning in 1900. Because of the large magnitude in the wood burned for energy category, how one accounts for emissions from wood used as a substitute for fossil fuels can have a great influence on how forests are managed for carbon sequestration. See Figure 1 for carbon flux in disposition categories over time.