Carbon Balance and Management

The African continent has a large and growing role in the global carbon cycle, with potentially important climate change implications. However, the sparse observation network in and around the African continent means that Africa is one of the weakest links in our understanding of the global carbon cycle. Here, we combine data from regional and global inventories as well as forward and inverse model analyses to appraise what is known about Africa's continental-scale carbon dynamics. With low fossil emissions and productivity that largely compensates respiration, land conversion is Africa's primary net carbon release, much of it through burning of forests. Savanna fire emissions, though large, represent a short-term source that is offset by ensuing regrowth. While current data suggest a near zero decadal-scale carbon balance, interannual climate fluctuations (especially drought) induce sizeable variability in net ecosystem productivity and savanna fire emissions such that Africa is a major source of interannual variability in global atmospheric CO2. Considering the continent's sizeable carbon stocks, their seemingly high vulnerability to anticipated climate and land use change, as well as growing populations and industrialization, Africa's carbon emissions and their interannual variability are likely to undergo substantial increases through the 21st century. Background Africa stands out among continents for widespread and deeply entrenched poverty, slow economic development, and agricultural systems prone to failure during frequent and persistent droughts [1]. Africa is also home to some rapidly developing economies, tremendous natural resources and remarkable social and ecological diversity. The unique history of Africa, the close dependencies of people on natural resources and a future that will certainly include substantial industrial, agricultural and social development, suggest that Africa will become a key player in the carbon cycle of the 21st century. However, our knowledge about Africa's current role in the global carbon cycle remains remarkably limited. We currently do not know whether Africa is a net sink or source of atmospheric carbon, and have only vague indications of the continent's temporal and spatial patterns of carbon exchange. Given the current development agenda that is intended to Published: 7 March 2007 Carbon Balance and Management 2007, 2:3 doi:10.1186/1750-0680-2-3 Received: 19 January 2007 Accepted: 7 March 2007 This article is available from: http://www.cbmjournal.com/content/2/1/3 © 2007 Williams et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.