Who might find this tool useful, where can they find it, and what can they use it for?
A tool to compute
ecosystem carbon
CarboScen
Adding or conserving ecosystem carbon can be an extremely cost-efficient way to mitigate climate change.
LEARN MOREHow much ecosystem carbon is there when land uses are changing?
When land uses are not changing, ecosystem carbon can be computed by multiplying area with carbon density. But how can we calculate ecosystem carbon in dynamic landscapes where there are changes not only in land use, but also in carbon densities due to a legacy of past uses?
- Define land-use classes
- Predict future land-use changes
- Set carbon equilibrium densities (e.g. tons per hectare)
- Input transition speeds based on local or global data
- Include uncertainty
Use CarboScen to compute future ecosystem carbon for a simulated land-use scenario

Follow the screencast tutorials below to learn how to use CarboScen.
2. Basic Settings
Learn about the basic settings of the software, how it works, and what kind of data needs to be entered.
3. Results
How to find and interpret results about biomass, soil and more using CarboScen.
4 Advanced Settings
Find out which settings to use, how to load settings from a file, how to save settings and how to export results.
5. File Structure
What the average user needs to understand about CarboScen’s file structure, and how they can find results.
6. Carbon Density Data
How to use CarboScen to compute realistic simulations, with or without field data.
7. Transition Speed
Learn how to set values on transition speed of carbon density, and to what extent the academic paper on the tool in the journal Ecography can be used as a guide.
8. Uncertainty
Find out what happens if uncertainty is included in the tool, whether standard deviation or a ‘bootstrapping’ method should be used, and how this works in practice.