Recently there has been increased interest in determining the baseline levels of carbon storage in different ecosystems, because of greater concern over the issue of global climate change and increased atmospheric CO2 concentrations. With a better understanding of carbon sequestration in various ecosystems, we can use land in a more environment-conscious way, and negative human impacts on the earth can be decreased. Forest ecosystems are especially important, because they have an immense capacity to store carbon as compared to other ecosystems. The majority of carbon sequestered in forest ecosystems is contained in tree biomass, but there is also carbon contained in soil, leaf litter, and necromass.
The primary objective of our experiment was to determine and compare the baseline amount of carbon sequestered in the biomass of different forest plots: old-growth versus young-growth and north-facing versus south-facing. We also compared these results to data that had been collected from the same plots in 2003. We found that for the most part, the amount of biomass had decreased; the only exception was the north-facing young-growth stand. This forest plot contained the most biomass, followed by the old-growth south-facing, then the young-growth south-facing, then the old-growth north-facing. We believe that the reason for the overall decrease in biomass was a large number of fallen trees
