XVI International Botanical Congess

Terrestrial ecosystems, especially trees, may serve as large reservoirs for long-term carbon storage. Therefore, the Kyoto protocol has recommended aforestations or reforestations as a measure to compensate for CO2 emissions. The significance of such political measures towards achieving the goal of atmospheric carbon reductions raises many questions. Trees are dynamic carbon reservoirs. To predict their role as carbon sinks, several important variables must known: developmental stage, maintenance of net increase in photosynthetic CO2 uptake over the whole life cycle of a tree, nutrient supply, allocation patterns of assimilated carbon into metabolically active (transport, transient storage, respiration) or inactive pools (lignins, celluloses, hemicelluloses). These topics will be discussed in the present paper.