In a mature forest ecosystem, soil is as important a carbon sink as the above-ground biomass.. As increasing numbers of forests are managed in a wide diversity of climates and soils, the potential importance of forest soils for carbon sequestration grows. The text provides researchers, land use managers, and policy makers with increased understanding of soil processes and their relation to carbon dynamics, techniques to measure and strategies to monitor forest soil carbon, the effects of management on soils in a wide range of forest ecosystems, and options that can be used in policy development.