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Live and dead moss layers occur in many of Canada’s forests and can contain large amounts of carbon. Carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, is used by mosses to grow and is stored as carbon in mosses for a long time, which reduces greenhouse gases. Mosses can also burn in forest fires and add to greenhouse gases. The computer model that calculates the amount of carbon and the greenhouse gas balance for Canada’s managed forests does not include mosses; we wanted to know if including mosses would improve the model’s ability to calculate the total amount of carbon in forests where mosses occur. We found that it did, especially if separate calculations were used for different types of mosses. This work is an important first step towards including mosses in the computer model to better calculate the contribution of mosses in forests to the greenhouse gas balance of Canada.
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