Tree parameters
30 cm
15 m
30 yr
Soil carbon (optional)
Soil carbon is a flow, not a stock. It is reported per year and is never added to the standing-stock figure above.
Carbon stored today
CO₂e held in one tree now
—kg CO₂e
| Per tree | Value |
|---|---|
| Above-ground biomass | — kg |
| Below-ground biomass (roots) | — kg |
| Total dry biomass | — kg |
| Carbon stored (47% of biomass) | — kg C |
| Mean accumulation over 30 yr | — kg CO₂e/yr |
| Current-year growth increment | — kg CO₂e/yr |
Project total — 1 trees
| Carbon stock in standing trees | — t CO₂e |
| Tree growth, per year | — t CO₂e/yr |
| Soil carbon accrual, per year | — t CO₂e/yr |
| Combined annual removal | — t CO₂e/yr |
How the number is built
| Step | Working |
|---|---|
| 1. Above-ground biomass | |
| 2. Add roots | |
| 3. Carbon fraction | |
| 4. Carbon to CO₂e |
Allometric model: AGB = 0.0673 × (ρD²H)0.976, the pantropical equation of Chave et al. (2014), with ρ the wood density in g/cm³, D the DBH in cm and H the total height in m. Carbon fraction 0.47 and the 44/12 = 3.667 molecular ratio are IPCC defaults. Root-to-shoot ratios follow IPCC 2006 Vol. 4 Ch. 4.
What each term means
DBH
Diameter at breast height, measured over bark at 1.3 m above ground on the uphill side. It is the single strongest predictor of biomass, which is why it is squared in the equation.
Standing stock versus annual removal
The headline figure is a stock: the CO₂e currently locked in the tree's biomass. It is not an annual rate and it is not "lifetime sequestration", because a tree that dies releases it again. The two annual figures are flows. Carbon crediting pays for the flow, verified over time, not for the stock.
Why roots are added
Below-ground biomass is real carbon but cannot be measured without destructive sampling, so IPCC publishes root-to-shoot ratios by ecological zone. Tropical moist forest sits near 0.24, meaning roots add about 24% on top of the above-ground figure.
Soil carbon
Soil organic carbon can accrue under tree cover, but the rate depends on prior land use, soil type, rainfall and management, and it saturates after two to four decades. The rates offered here are broad literature ranges. Any soil claim in a carbon project needs baseline and repeat sampling to a fixed depth.
Current-year growth increment
Trees do not grow at a constant rate. This figure scales the long-run mean by age band — faster when young, slower past maturity — to indicate roughly where the tree sits on its growth curve. It is an indication, not a yield model. A real project uses species- and site-specific growth curves.
This is a screening estimate, not a carbon credit. Issuance under any registry requires field-measured plots, a defined baseline, additionality, leakage and permanence assessment, and third-party verification. Allometric equations carry 10 to 30% uncertainty even when applied correctly, and more when used outside the forest type they were fitted on.