Carbon Compost and Climate

Carbon goes into a heap in leaves and comes out as soil and as gas. Following it is a way into the carbon cycle that is physically present rather than diagrammatic.

The honest complication, which the sheet includes, is that a badly managed heap releases methane and a well managed one mostly does not, so the practice matters more than the principle.

The page has the cycle frame, a measurement of heap volume loss over time, and calculations. It also has the wider context, which is what the same process does at global scale in soils, and why soil carbon is discussed as seriously as it is.