Re: How much carbon is in one pound of hardwood?

Hi Tyler,

how much carbon is in a pound of hardwood? The answer depends on the type of hardwood you are looking at. For many years, scientists used a ballpark figure of 50% carbon (Lamlom and Savidge 2003), but more accurate figures have recently been published. For hardwoods in the temperate zone, the estimated carbon content is about 47% (Lamlom and Savidge 2003), while tropical hardwoods range from 46-49% carbon (Hughes et al. 2000). However, wood carbon content is also known to change during a tree’s development, with younger trees often producing lower-carbon wood (Hughes et al. 2000). You can find a good table of estimated wood density for various life stages and climate zones in Chapter Four of the IPCC’s Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories. The table is on pg. 48.

Literature Cited

Hughes, R.F., Kauffman, J.B. and Jaramillo-Luque, V.J. (2000). Ecosystem-scale impacts of deforestation and land use in a humid tropical region of México. Ecological Applications 10: 515-527.

Lamlom, S.H. and Savidge, R.A. (2003). A reassessment of carbon content in wood: variation within and between 41 North American species. Biomass and Bioenergy 25: 381-388.