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Definition
“Carbon balance” is defined as the balance of carbon flows within a specific “carbon cycle” or at the level of the “global carbon cycle.”
Introduction
The carbon cycle involves three “districts” of the Earth: the hydrosphere, the biosphere, and the atmosphere. These districts are called “carbon sink” and are linked together in what is the natural cycle. A fourth carbon sink “district” is that of the geosphere, in which carbon settles in tens of millions of years and becomes fossil fuel or fossil carbon (Ferrara and Ferrugia 2007). However, the geosphere has no natural connection with the remaining three districts, and the carbon accumulated in it does not come out naturally. The human factor has created an artificial connection “tube” between the geosphere district and the atmosphere, thus connecting the fourth district to the other three, leading to an imbalance between the flows: the carbon released by the geosphere does not...
References
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Castrofino, A. (2020). Carbon Balance. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_1073-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_1073-1
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