When we talk about an entire forest ecosystem, we're talking about a very large area of forest, like a country's forest or forests in several provinces . Can only mature forests represent forest soil carbon emissions, or can the average of young and mature forests represent that?
Hello,
You may ask experts at department of forest ecology and management, Swedish University of agricultural sciences. Below you can find the link:
https://www.slu.se/en/departments/forest-ecology-management/about-us/personal/
Good luck, Elaheh
Dear Sun Hongru,
well, I would say that this really depends on the type of forest cover of your study area. I mean, it seems rather difficult to me to assess this on such a large spatial scale as on country- or (multi-)provinces dimensions, which you mention. If you have a smaller study area at hand, I'd recommend to calculate estimates of the spatial extents of the respective types of actual forest cover (e.g., young, intermediate, mature etc.). So, yes, I think forest age does matter here.
Best,
Julius
When you say "forest soil carbon emissions" I assume that you are talking about the amount of carbon being sequestered by the trees in their wood? Or do you mean that there are carbon emission getting airborne from forest trees?
However, if you are talking about "sequestered carbon", that carbon is vulnerable to fires, and can only be stored as long as the tree remains alive, which is usually only a few hundred years.
However, if you check the grasslands especially in desert or arid areas, once the roots and leaves put that carbon into the soil, it says there for many hundreds to several thousands of years--and you can check the time span with radiocarbon dating. And if a fire does go through, it is not going to have any impact on the carbon in the soil below a few cm.
I have shared some links below which might be helpful
Chapter Soil Carbon Accumulation in Old-Growth Forests
DOI: 10.2307/2387826
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/forest-soil
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