- wood
- peat
- soil organic matter
- sediments
- long-lived biomass
- detrital pools
Operational definition
Ecological pool category.
Organic matter containing chemical free energy that remains within an ecosystem pool for an ecologically significant residence time.
Examples include:
- standing wood;
- peat;
- soil organic matter;
- sedimentary organic carbon;
- long-lived roots;
- persistent detritus.
Unlike behavioral storage, ecosystem-scale storage need not be intentional or retrievable by the organism that produced it. Glycogen and starch are widespread carbon and energy reserves; lipids and microbial polymers provide other storage forms, while storage theory treats reserve accumulation as an allocation strategy under future uncertainty. (PubMed Central (PMC))