Quantifying carbon in tree bark: The importance of bark morphology and tree size

1. Bark contributes approximately 20% to the total above‐ground biomass of trees, yet bark is not properly accounted for when estimating carbon sequestered by trees. Current allometric functions estimate tree volume from diameter measured over the bark, and derive bark density and carbon content from estimates for wood. As the bark density of hardwood species is 40%–50% lower than the wood density, but nearly equivalent in conifers, bark carbon is overestimated for most species. The latter is further exacerbated by variation in bark volume with bark surface morphology. 2. Fissured bark volume is overestimated by diameter over bark measurements by up to 40%. The vacant space in fissures can be accounted for by a bark fissure index (BFI). We calculate bark carbon for Australian species from a non‐destructive and effective BFI using bark thickness measured in the field. 3. Bark volume, and in turn bark carbon, scaled inversely with tree size (diameter) so that bark volume comprised 42% of small trees (10 cm diameter at breast height, DBH) but 23% of large trees (50 cm DBH). Our BFI method using a bark thickness gauge (BGM) yielded similar results than using the less time‐efficient contour gauge method (CM) to estimate BFI (bias BGM‐CM −1.3%, non‐significant at p = 0.72). Both BGM and CM had an error of <4% compared to digitized BFI from destructive sampled stem disks. An average of 15 bark gauge measurements per tree estimated bark thickness (and inconsequence BFI) for both fissured and unfissured bark with <20% error relative to the exact value. 4. Using the bark gauge method, BFI can be rapidly measured from large numbers of trees needed for estimating bark carbon at the community level and modelling carbon uptake, storage and cycling in woody biomes.