The carbon balance of South America: a review of the status, decadal trends and main determinants

We summarise the contemporary carbon budget of South America and relate it to its dominant controls: popu- lation and economic growth, changes in land use practices and a changing atmospheric environment and climate. Com- ponent flux estimate methods we consider sufficiently reli- able for this purpose encompass fossil fuel emission invento- ries, biometric analysis of old-growth rainforests, estimation of carbon release associated with deforestation based on re- mote sensing and inventories, and agricultural export data. Alternative methods for the estimation of the continental- scale net land to atmosphere CO2 flux, such as atmospheric transport inverse modelling and terrestrial biosphere model