Quantifying forest growth and uncertainty across Brazil under potential future climates: combing models and Earth Observation

Author(s):  
Thomas Smallman ◽  
David Milodowski ◽  
Mathew Williams

<p>Forest play a major role in the global carbon cycle storing large amounts of carbon in both living and dead organic matter. Forests can be either a sink or source of carbon depending on the net of far larger fluxes of carbon into (photosynthesis) and out of (mortality, decomposition and disturbance) forest ecosystems. Due to the potential for substantial accumulation of carbon in forests, has led to nationally determined commitments (NDCs) by Governments across the world to protect existing and plant large areas of new forest. However, significant uncertainty remains in our understanding of current forest carbon cycling, especially mortality and decomposition processes, and how carbon cycling will change under climate change. These uncertainties present two connected challenges to effective forest protection and new planting; (i) which existing forests are under the greatest risk to climate change and (ii) where are the most climate safe locations for new forest planting to maximise carbon accumulation.</p><p>Here we combine a terrestrial ecosystem model of intermediate complexity (DALEC) with Earth observation (e.g. leaf area, biomass, disturbance) and databased information (soil texture and carbon stocks) within a Bayesian model-data fusion framework (CARDAMOM) to retrieve location specific carbon cycle analyse (i.e. parameter retrievals) across Brazil at 0.5 x 0.5 degree spatial resolution between 2001 and 2015. CARDAMOM allows us to retrieve, independently for each location analysed, an ensemble of parameters for DALEC which are consistent with the location specific observational constraints and their uncertainties. These ensembles give us multiple potential, but observation consistent, realisations of forest carbon cycling and ecosystem traits. We directly quantify our uncertainty in forest carbon cycling and ecosystem traits from these ensembles. The DALEC parameterisations are then simulated into the future under a range of climate scenarios from the CMIP6 model dataset. From these simulations we will, with defined uncertainty, quantify the impact on forest carbon accumulation of existing forest and the potential accumulation of new planting. This information can feed into national planning identifying locations which have the greatest confidence of being a net sink of carbon under climate change highlighting forest areas which are most important to protect and suitable for new planting.</p>

Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 824
Author(s):  
Egor Dyukarev ◽  
Evgeny Zarov ◽  
Pavel Alekseychik ◽  
Jelmer Nijp ◽  
Nina Filippova ◽  
...  

The peatlands of the West Siberian Lowlands, comprising the largest pristine peatland area of the world, have not previously been covered by continuous measurement and monitoring programs. The response of peatlands to climate change occurs over several decades. This paper summarizes the results of peatland carbon balance studies collected over ten years at the Mukhrino field station (Mukhrino FS, MFS) operating in the Middle Taiga Zone of Western Siberia. A multiscale approach was applied for the investigations of peatland carbon cycling. Carbon dioxide fluxes at the local scale studied using the chamber method showed net accumulation with rates from 110, to 57.8 gC m−2 at the Sphagnum hollow site. Net CO2 fluxes at the pine-dwarf shrubs-Sphagnum ridge varied from negative (−32.1 gC m−2 in 2019) to positive (13.4 gC m−2 in 2017). The cumulative May-August net ecosystem exchange (NEE) from eddy-covariance (EC) measurements at the ecosystem scale was −202 gC m−2 in 2015, due to the impact of photosynthesis of pine trees which was not registered by the chamber method. The net annual accumulation of carbon in the live part of mosses was estimated at 24–190 gC m−2 depending on the Sphagnum moss species. Long-term carbon accumulation rates obtained by radiocarbon analysis ranged from 28.5 to 57.2 gC m−2 yr−1, with local extremes of up to 176.2 gC m−2 yr−1. The obtained estimates of various carbon fluxes using EC and chamber methods, the accounting for Sphagnum growth and decomposition, and long-term peat accumulation provided information about the functioning of the peatland ecosystems at different spatial and temporal scales. Multiscale carbon flux monitoring reveals useful new information for forecasting the response of northern peatland carbon cycles to climatic changes.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Shengwu Duan

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI--COLUMBIA AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Oak-dominated forests in the Ozarks Highlands of Arkansas and Missouri have been suffering severe oak decline and this became a chronic problem since the late 1970s. Such decline became increasingly severe as numerous dense oak forests in this region approaching physiological maturity. Repeated droughts and insect outbreaks in the Ozarks Highlands from 1998 to 2015 accelerate the decline process and resulted in increased mortality of the oaks, particularly those in red oak group. Given these concerns, the overall objective of this dissertation was to conduct a regional scale assessment to evaluate and predict the impact of drought and insects on the oak forests under changing climate. This dissertation contained three main objectives: 1) to evaluate the drought effect on forest growth phenology and productivity by using spatially-explicit drought indices and land surface phenology techniques to capture oak, pine and mixed oak-pine forests' responses to repeated droughts; 2) to develop a climate sensitive biotic disturbance agent (BDA) module in forest landscape modeling framework to quantify the relative importance in determining the insect disturbance regimes under the warming climate; and 3) to predict the effects of insect disturbance, climate change and their interactions on forest composition under alternative climate and insect disturbance scenarios. The dissertation provided a methodology to disassemble the spatial and temporal variation of drought conditions in the Ozark Highlands and provided new insights into improving drought resistance and recovery capacity of forests with different species under climate change. The results from this dissertation also helped to understand the importance of vegetation feedback in predicting inset disturbance regimes under a warming climate as they may mediate or even reverse the expectation of increased insect disturbance in this region. In addition, the projections of how tree species will response to insect disturbance will benefit decision making in silvicultural prescriptions and longterm management plans in the Ozark Highlands.


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-59
Author(s):  
Dan Naylor ◽  
Natalie Sadler ◽  
Arunima Bhattacharjee ◽  
Emily B. Graham ◽  
Christopher R. Anderton ◽  
...  

Communities of soil microorganisms (soil microbiomes) play a major role in biogeochemical cycles and support of plant growth. Here we focus primarily on the roles that the soil microbiome plays in cycling soil organic carbon and the impact of climate change on the soil carbon cycle. We first discuss current challenges in understanding the roles carried out by highly diverse and heterogeneous soil microbiomes and review existing knowledge gaps in understanding how climate change will impact soil carbon cycling by the soil microbiome. Because soil microbiome stability is a key metric to understand as the climate changes, we discuss different aspects of stability, including resistance, resilience, and functional redundancy.We then review recent research pertaining to the impact of major climate perturbations on the soil microbiome and the functions that they carry out. Finally, we review new experimental methodologies and modeling approaches under development that should facilitate our understanding of the complex nature of the soil microbiome to better predict its future responses to climate change.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis de Wergifosse ◽  
Frédéric André ◽  
Nicolas Beudez ◽  
François de Coligny ◽  
Hugues Goosse ◽  
...  

Abstract. Climate change affects forest growth in numerous and sometimes opposite ways and the resulting trend is often difficult to predict for a given site. Integrating and structuring the knowledge gained from the monitoring and experimental studies into process-based models is an interesting approach to predict the response of forest ecosystems to climate change. While the first generation of such models operates at stand level, we need now individual-based and spatially-explicit approaches in order to account for structurally complex stands whose importance is increasingly recognized in the changing environment context. Among the climate-sensitive drivers of forest growth, phenology and water availability are often cited as crucial elements. They influence, for example, the length of the vegetation period during which photosynthesis takes place and the stomata opening, which determines the photosynthesis rate. In this paper, we describe the phenology and water balance modules integrated in the tree growth model HETEROFOR and evaluate them on six Belgian sites. More precisely, we assess the ability of the model to reproduce key phenological processes (budburst, leaf development, yellowing and fall) as well as water fluxes. Three variants are used to predict budburst (Uniforc, Unichill and Sequential), which differ regarding the inclusion of chilling and/or forcing periods and the calculation of the coldness or heat accumulation. Among the three, the Sequential approach is the least biased (overestimation of 2.46 days) while Uniforc (chilling not considered) best accounts for the interannual variability (Pearson’s R = 0.68). For the leaf development, yellowing and fall, predictions and observation are in accordance. Regarding the water balance module, the predicted throughfall is also in close agreement with the measurements (Pearson’s R = 0.856, bias = −1.3 %) and the soil water dynamics across the year is well-reproduced for all the study sites (Pearson’s R comprised between 0.893 and 0.950, and bias between −1.81 and −9.33 %). The positive results from the model assessment will allow us to use it reliably in projection studies to evaluate the impact of climate change on tree growth and test how diverse forestry practices can adapt forests to these changes.


Web Ecology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-136
Author(s):  
Dennis Castillo-Figueroa

Abstract. Along with habitat transformation, climate change has profound impacts on biodiversity and may alter ecosystem services on which human welfare depends. Many studies of the carbon cycle have focused on lowland tropical forests; however, upland forests have been less explored despite their pivotal role in carbon sequestration. Here, I synthesized the state of knowledge on the allocation of carbon in its different stocks (aboveground, belowground, and soil) as well as in its main fluxes (plant decomposition, respiration, and litterfall) in tropical upland ecosystems of the planet. In November 2020, a systematic review was carried out to identify references published from 2000 to 2020 through a combination of key terms in Google Scholar and Scopus databases, thus analysing bibliographic, geographical, methodological, and carbon cycling information of the global upland tropics (between 23.5∘ N–23.5∘ S). After analysing a total of 1967 references according to inclusion–exclusion criteria, 135 references published in the last 20 years were selected. Most of the studies were conducted in the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest of South America. The main factors studied were elevation and forest type. Forest structure and soil variables were largely associated when studying carbon cycling in these ecosystems. Estimations of carbon stocks comprised three-fourths of the total studies, while the remaining fraction focused on carbon fluxes. Aboveground biomass and carbon in soils were highly investigated, while plant decomposition and respiration were the components that received the least attention. Even though in the last 20 years there was a slight increase in the number of studies on carbon cycle in tropical upland forests, I found bias associated with the biomes and ecoregions studied (especially in the Andes). Elevation was the main factor examined but other essential aspects such as the successional gradient, landscape management, diversity–productivity relationship, faunal and microbial effect, trophic cascades, and Gadgil effect require more attention. The inclusion of different litter species and origins (i.e. roots and stems) and theoretical frameworks including home-field advantage, substrate–matrix interaction, and phenology–substrate match may provide explanatory mechanisms to better understand litter decomposition over these forests. Despite respiration being a paramount link that is closely tied to above- and belowground compartment, this flux constitutes one of the important gaps to fulfil in future research. For a comprehensive understanding of the carbon cycle in upland forests, it is necessary to obtain information on its main fluxes and integrate them into climate change mitigation plans.


2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (14) ◽  
pp. 3337-3353 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Friedlingstein ◽  
P. Cox ◽  
R. Betts ◽  
L. Bopp ◽  
W. von Bloh ◽  
...  

Abstract Eleven coupled climate–carbon cycle models used a common protocol to study the coupling between climate change and the carbon cycle. The models were forced by historical emissions and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) A2 anthropogenic emissions of CO2 for the 1850–2100 time period. For each model, two simulations were performed in order to isolate the impact of climate change on the land and ocean carbon cycle, and therefore the climate feedback on the atmospheric CO2 concentration growth rate. There was unanimous agreement among the models that future climate change will reduce the efficiency of the earth system to absorb the anthropogenic carbon perturbation. A larger fraction of anthropogenic CO2 will stay airborne if climate change is accounted for. By the end of the twenty-first century, this additional CO2 varied between 20 and 200 ppm for the two extreme models, the majority of the models lying between 50 and 100 ppm. The higher CO2 levels led to an additional climate warming ranging between 0.1° and 1.5°C. All models simulated a negative sensitivity for both the land and the ocean carbon cycle to future climate. However, there was still a large uncertainty on the magnitude of these sensitivities. Eight models attributed most of the changes to the land, while three attributed it to the ocean. Also, a majority of the models located the reduction of land carbon uptake in the Tropics. However, the attribution of the land sensitivity to changes in net primary productivity versus changes in respiration is still subject to debate; no consensus emerged among the models.


Author(s):  
P. J. Rayner ◽  
E. Koffi ◽  
M. Scholze ◽  
T. Kaminski ◽  
J.-L. Dufresne

We use a carbon-cycle data assimilation system to estimate the terrestrial biospheric CO 2 flux until 2090. The terrestrial sink increases rapidly and the increase is stronger in the presence of climate change. Using a linearized model, we calculate the uncertainty in the flux owing to uncertainty in model parameters. The uncertainty is large and is dominated by the impact of soil moisture on heterotrophic respiration. We show that this uncertainty can be greatly reduced by constraining the model parameters with two decades of atmospheric measurements.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
João HN Palma ◽  
Rodrigo Hakamada ◽  
Gabriela Gonçalves Moreira ◽  
Silvana Nobre ◽  
Luiz Carlos Estraviz Rodriguez

AbstractEucalyptus plantations around the world have been largely used by the paper industry. Optimizing the management of resources is a common practice in this highly competitive industry and new forest growth models may help to understand the impact of climate change on the decisions of the optimization processes. Current optimized management plans use empirical equations to predict future forest stands growth, and it is currently impractical to replace these empirical equations with physiological models due to data input requirements. In this paper, we present a different approach, by first carrying out a preliminary assessment with the process-based physiological model 3PG to evaluate the growth of Eucalyptus stands under climate change predictions. The information supplied by 3PG was then injected as a modifier in the projected yield that feeds the management plan optimizer allowing the interpretation of climate change impacts on the management plan. Modelling results show that although a general increase of rain with climate change is predicted, the distribution throughout the year will not favor the tree growth. On the contrary, rain will increase when it is less needed (summer) and decrease when it is most needed (winter), decreasing forest stand productivity between 3 and 5%, depending on the region and soil. Evaluation of the current optimized plan that kept constant the relation between wood price/cellulose ton shows a variation in different strategic management options and an overall increase of costs in owned areas between 2 and 4%, and a decrease of cumulated net present value, initially at 15% with later stabilization at 6–8%. This is a basic comparison to observe climate change effects; nevertheless, it provides insights into how the entire decision-making process may change due to a reduction in biomass production under future climate scenarios. This work demonstrates the use of physiological models to extract information that could be merged with existing and already implemented empirical models. The methodology may also be considered a preliminary alternative to the complete replacement of empirical models by physiological models. Our approach allows some insight into forest responses to different future climate conditions, something which empirical models are not designed for.


Author(s):  
Ferawati Runtuboi ◽  
Julius Nugroho ◽  
Yahya Rahakratat

Seagrass is a high level and a flowering plant that is fully adapted to life in the coastal and has ability to store carbon by 10% of the carbon content in the oceans. The research doing at Gunung Botak Bay Coastal South Manokwari Regency with objective of research to estimate seagrass density and to estimate rate accumulation of carbon from Enhalus acroides. Some the stages of the research done is density sample as long to period 2015 (April and Mei) into (September and Ocktober). Other sampling to collecting seagrass to estimate carbon storage in part like daun, rhizome root and substrat. Result to showing average carbon accumulation of seagrass in above below ground is rhizome part and higher in Statiun1 (13.16±3.8),stasiun 3 (5.4±2.9) dan stasiun 5 (6.2±1.1) or the generally accumulation carbon in the three is 8.24 kg from Enhalus acroides. Future more, accumulation carbon in sediment as a 1664,2 in dept 0-20 cm and 20-60 cm. Seagrass carbon storage capabilities will assist in mitigation efforts to reduce the impact of climate change in Indonesia, especially in West Papua.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Krause ◽  
Almut Arneth ◽  
Anja Rammig

<p>The carbon balance of terrestrial ecosystems is determined by environmental drivers (chiefly related to climate and land use) which interact with each other and change over time. In particular, ecosystems are presently still affected by past environmental changes because they have not yet reached equilibrium with their environment. However, the magnitude and drivers of this legacy effect for the upcoming decades are still unclear. Here, we use the dynamic global vegetation model LPJ-GUESS to calculate the effects of historical (1850-2015) and future (2015-2099, exemplarily for the high emission/moderate deforestation scenario SSP5-8.5) environmental changes on historical and future terrestrial carbon cycling and to quantify the contributions of the following environmental drivers: climate change, CO<sub>2 </sub>fertilization, agricultural expansion, shifting cultivation frequency, wood harvest, nitrogen deposition, and nitrogen fertilization.</p><p>According to our simulations, the land represented a cumulative net carbon source (-154 GtC) over the historical period mainly due to deforestation, wood harvest, and negative climate change impacts partly offset by carbon uptake via increased CO<sub>2</sub> levels and nitrogen input. In contrast, the land is simulated to act as a net carbon sink (+118 GtC) over the 21<sup>st</sup> century. This is mostly a result of historical environmental changes as ecosystems still adapt to present-day CO<sub>2</sub> and nitrogen availability as well as long-term vegetation regrowth following agricultural abandonment and wood harvest. The net impact of future environmental changes on future carbon cycling is much smaller because effects from individual environmental drivers largely compensate. Historical environmental changes dominate future terrestrial carbon cycling at least until mid-century when legacy effects gradually diminish and future environmental changes start to trigger carbon accumulation. Our results suggest that legacy effects persist even many decades after environmental changes occurred and need to be considered when interpreting alterations of the terrestrial carbon cycle.</p>


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