Here’s a convoluted question. First some back-ground.
Over the last 20+ years, we (Indiana TNC) have planted a 2,500+ acres of forest on ex-agricultural land across Indiana (USA). In all cases, these forest restorations were performed to restore ecological processes (primarily nutrient removal from surface water and to increase groundwater recharge rates) or to buffer biodiversity conservation areas (primarily by reducing edge to volume ratios in fragmented landscapes). I want to understand if carbon sequestration creates “added value” that can be used to further justify this rather expensive program.
Without investing in new data collection – I’m looking for approaches that will get me reasonable sequestration estimates for these projects.
How would you approach this?
Information that I have in hand includes precise acreages planted – date of planting, planting densities, species mixes and we can probably get soil type easily. I also have solid estimates of “standing biomass” for all forest types across the state (note that these do not include below-ground biomass estimates). From this data, I can get above-ground estimates for “mature” forest (~80 years old).
What I’m really missing is below ground biomass estimates and accumulation rates, and accumulation rates in general during the initial decades of forest establishment. And then, ideas on how to apply such info to my specific plantings….
I’m looking for your good ideas on how to approach this (in other words, if you’re just trying to impact your scores – stick a sock in it).
Thanks,
John
So..., Looking for answers, Not lessons in obvious equilibrium dynamics... Anyone?
j
Below ground biomass does not react in the same way as above, where atmospheric conditions are rather uniform. Moisture and permeability may change; in the long run even natural burial may occur.
Roots are growing to different depths depending on plants and soil conditions. How can an overview be obtained over the time scales ?
From grassland it is known, that frequent cutting inhibits the roots to grow deeper; what is the reaction of trees, depending on the age they can survive ?
Hi John;
I'd suggest you get in touch with the Natural Resources and Ecology Lab at Colorado State U; they've done extensive ecosystem carbon modeling, including forest modeling, and may have what you are looking for.
best,
Jeff Creque, Carbon Cycle Institute
Thanks Jeffrey - I'm already engaged with a similar resource pool at Purdue but the data and models get sketchy during the "establishment years" and there is almost nothing available for soils between the start date (low carbon agricultural fields) and the "mature forest stage". It's not just buried wood and roots - soils in our regional forests have between 3-8% C by weight). It's figuring out how to best fit the curves (or lack of curves) that baffles me.
Kenneth - you didn't upset me so much as irritate me. I'm not looking to save the world, just want to quantify the sequestration achieved by the couple million trees we've planted.
The swiss institute WSL investigates also with european partners as in the COST Action FPO803 Belowground carbon turnover in European forests ( 2008-2012).
Numerous author (e.g. Brown, Gillespie et al. 1989) stated that no direct method used to quantify carbon stock in a landscape. Many efforts to develop tools and models that can ‘scale up’ or extrapolate destructive harvest date points to larger scales based on proxies measured in the field or from remote sensing instruments. The thing is that allometric equations are till now the only way to have a good idea of carbon stock. A lot of works done classifying forest. You can follow this reference but it also needs to be justified with your forest types also:
Chave, J., et al. (2005). "Tree allometry and improved estimation of carbon stocks and balance in tropical forests." Oecologia 145(1): 87-99.
A lot of literature we have to quantify the carbon sequestration, we can use also.
Dear John.
Your question is certainly interesting. To me it means ’how to estimate carbon sequestration rate in the ground with a minimum of information?’
We may imagine two components, namely carbon in an organic layer and that in (and protected by) the mineral soil. I can try and develop a response about the organic (humus) layer and will refer to investigations carried out over Sweden.
We found – based on long-term measurements – that the organic layer grew in forests all over the country – there was – so far – (MAT)no steady state. The forests are boreal and temperate coniferous. Nowadays wild fires are relatively rare – earlier they could burn off the organic layer with a rather high frequency. So, calculated over 40 years (40 years’ annual measurements) we found an increase in humus-layer carbon that was positively related to temperature. No suggestion about a ‘steady state’ or ‘balance’. Ref. Berg et al. (2009) Canadian Journal of Forestry 39; 962-975 (attached).
We made another study based on (i) foliar litter fall and (ii) litter decomposition data. (i) We had good litter fall data for the whole country which we had related positively to temperature (MAT) and to actual evapotranspiration (AET). Litter fall is normally related to hectare, but you may use basal area too. (ii) Based on a very high number of long-term litter decomposition studies we had calculated a set of values for which decomposition – in fact – gave a mass-loss rate of zero (limit values). That was a stage reached at high values for accumulated mass loss. Ref e.g. Berg (2014) Soil Biology and Biochemistry 78; 222-232 (attached). As you will see from Berg (2014) the limit value/stable fraction can be related to a few nutrients. That has been done too (Berg 2004; attached) and a few key nutrients may be used (N, Mn and Ca) to predict limit value/stable fraction.
With the value for accumulated mass loss at which the rate was zero we could easily calculate a residue. That stable residue is likely to have an extremely low decom-position rate – there have been studies on that, too. When combining foliar litter fall and the fraction of stable residue we could in principle estimate the build-up rate for an organic layer. We had done that for single stands (e.g. Berg et al. 2001, Canadian Journal of Forest Research, 31;988-998, attached) and later we extended the calcul-ations to the whole country using a geographical data base with AET as a driver for litter fall (Akselsson et al. 2005, Global Ecology and Biogeography 14; 77-84 (attached).
When comparing the two approaches we found the same order of magnitude (predicted vs measured values) and to me it appeared to be a possibility to develop the approach with calculated stable residues. As we - in the above approach - limited the C sequestration to the humus layer it appears that the numbers between the approaches fit quite well.
So, in response to your question – in principle in should be possible to estimate litter fall if we know or can estimate the basal area of your forest and AET. Knowing that, you may estimate a first sequestration of C from a minimum of litter-fall data plus limit values/ stable residues which, in turn may be estimated from a few litter nutrients (e.g. Berg 2014, ref above).
I do not suggest that this is enough to estimate carbon sequestration with precision but it may be a start for your estimates. In case you think this may be of value to you – I am open to continue the discussion.
Good luck with your work
Björn (Berg)
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