The focus of my research is to specify how the degradation of soil organic matter in the boreal forest is influenced by possible temperature changes as, e.g. by increasing air and soil temperatures due to climate change.

The global soil carbon pools contain twice the amount of carbon stored in the atmosphere as CO_2. - Therefore small changes in these soil pools may affect directly the atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and thereby act as an additional factor controlling the global air temperature.

In general the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is partly influenced by natural processes and partly by human activity, foremost from combustion of coal and oil, whereas the natural processes are dominated by respiration and photosynthesis. Thus, the storage abilities of the soil are of major importance for reliable predictions of the possible contribution of anthropogenic activities to global warming.