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Abstract
Forest ecosystems play dominant roles in global carbon budget because of the large quantities stored in live biomass, detritus, and soil organic matter. Researchers in various countries have investigated regional and continental scale patterns of carbon (C) stocks in forest ecosystems; however, the relationship between stand age in different components (vegetation, forest floor detritus, and mineral soil) and C storage and sequestration remains poorly understood. In this paper, we assessed an age sequence of 18-, 20-, 25-, 38-, and 42-year-old Pinus tabulaeformis planted by analyzing the vertical distribution of different components biomass with similar site conditions on Mt. Taiyue, Shanxi, China. The results showed that biomass of P. tabulaeformis planted stands was ranged from 88.59 Mg ha−1 for the 25-year-old stand to 231.05 Mg ha−1 for the 42-year-old stand and the major biomass was in the stems. Biomass of the ground vegetation varied from 0.51 to 1.35 Mg C ha−1 between the five stands. The forest floor biomass increased with increasing stand age. The mean C concentration of total tree was 49.94%, which was higher than C concentrations of ground vegetation and forest floor. Different organs of trees C concentration were between 54.14% and 47.74%. C concentrations stored in the mineral soil for each stand experienced decline with increasing soil depth, but were age-independent. Total C storage of five planted forests ranged from 122.15 to 229.85 Mg C ha−1, of which 51.44–68.38% of C storage was in the soil and 28.46–45.21% in vegetation. The study provided not only with an estimation biomass of P. tabulaeformis planted forest in Mt. Taiyue, Shanxi, China, but also with accurately estimating forest C storage at ecosystem scale.
Acknowledgments
This project is supported by National Forestry Public Welfare Profession Scientific Research Project (no. 201104008), National Bureau of Forestry 948 project (no. 2010-4-15), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. TD2011-07), and CFERN&GENE Award Funds on Ecological Paper. The authors thank all those who provided helpful suggestions and critical comments on this manuscript and anonymous reviewers. We also thank the Lingkong Mountain National Nature Reserve for their support in fieldworks. The English language was revised by Dr. Osbert Jianxin Sun and Dr. Gerrit Hazenberg.
