How much carbon can the Siberian boreal taiga store: a case study of partitioning among the above-ground and soil pools

In the context of global carbon cycle management, accurate knowledge of carbon content in forests is a relevant issue in contemporary forest ecology. We measured the above-ground and soil carbon pools in the dark-coniferous boreal taiga. We compared measured carbon pools to those calculated from the forest inventory records containing volume stock and species composition data. The inventory data heavily underestimated the pools in the study area (Stolby State Nature Reserve, central Krasnoyarsk Territory, Russian Federation). The carbon pool estimated from the forest inventory data varied from 25 (t ha^?1) (low-density stands) to 73 (t ha^?1) (highly stocked stands). Our estimates ranged from 59 (t ha^?1) (low-density stands) to 147 (t ha^?1) (highly stocked stands). Our values included living trees, standing deadwood, living cover, brushwood and litter. We found that the proportion of biomass carbon (living trees): soil carbon varied from 99:1 to 8:2 for fully stocked and low-density forest stands, respectively. This contradicts the common understanding that the biomass in the boreal forests represents only 16–20 % of the total carbon pool, with the balance being the soil carbon pool.