Carbon sequestration of black locust forests in the Yellow River Delta region, China

Abstract

The Yellow River Delta region in China is a land area of 1,200,000 ha with rich natural resources. Adverse environmental conditions, such as low rainfall and high salinity, promote the dominance of black locust trees for afforestation. With the increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere, this forest and others throughout the world have become valued for their ability to sequester and store carbon. Forests store carbon in aboveground biomass (i.e. trees), belowground biomass (i.e. roots), soils and standing litter crop (i.e. forest floor and coarse woody debris). There are well-developed methods to sample forest ecosystems, including tree inventories that are used to quantify carbon in aboveground tree biomass. Such inventories are used to estimate the types of roundwood products removed from the forest during harvesting. Based on standard plot inventories and stem analyses, carbon sequestration estimates of trees were 222.41 t ha⁻¹ for the Yellow River Delta region accounted for 67.12% of the whole forest. Similarly, carbon storage by herbaceous matter and soil was 0.50 and 50.34 t ha⁻¹, respectively. The results suggest that carbon sequestration in the forest ecosystem was performed by most of the forest, which plays an increasingly important role in sequestering carbon as the stand grows.

Keywords:

• black locust forest
• afforestation
• carbon sequestration
• carbon storage
• Yellow River Delta

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the State Plan of Science & Technology Supporting Project of China (2006BAD03A15). We are grateful for this support.