Dataset Information

Aboveground carbon of community-managed Chirpine (Pinus roxburghii Sarg.) forests of Nepal based on stand types and geographic aspects.

ABSTRACT: On a global scale, about 15.5% of forests are administered through community-based forestry programs that offer the opportunity for enhanced carbon sequestration while maintaining the supply of more traditional goods and services such as cooking fuels, animal fodder and bedding. A challenge in community forest (CF) management is to realize their carbon value without compromising their role in the provision of these traditional goods and services. In this study of CF dominated by Pinus roxburghii in the Phalebas region of Nepal, the impacts of stand composition and geographic aspect on aboveground forest carbon is investigated as a means to optimize CF management for both traditional values and for emerging carbon market values. The aboveground carbon of mixed and monospecific stands of Pinus roxburghii was estimated using a combination of destructive sampling and species-specific allometric equations. On average, monospecific stands contained 106.2 Mg C ha-1 in aboveground tree biomass, significantly more than mixed stands at 73.1 Mg C ha-1 (p = 0.022). Similarly, stands growing on northern aspects (northeast 124.8 Mg C ha-1, northwest 100.9 Mg C ha-1) stored significantly more carbon (p = 0.002) than southern aspects (southeast 75.3 Mg C ha-1, southwest 57.6 Mg C ha-1), reflecting the more favorable growing conditions of northern aspects. These results suggest monospecific stands planted on northern aspects may be best suited for management to achieve carbon benefits, whilst mixed-species stands on southern aspects may be better suited for biodiversity conservation and supporting livelihoods. To maintain and increase carbon value, community forestry may need to implement nutrient return practices to limit the impact of sustained nutrient removals on stand productivity.

SUBMITTER: Pariyar S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6410687 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Aboveground carbon of community-managed Chirpine (<i>Pinus roxburghii</i> Sarg.) forests of Nepal based on stand types and geographic aspects.

Pariyar Shiva S Volkova Liubov L Volkova Liubov L Sharma Ram P RP Sunam Ramesh R Weston Christopher J CJ

PeerJ 20190308

On a global scale, about 15.5% of forests are administered through community-based forestry programs that offer the opportunity for enhanced carbon sequestration while maintaining the supply of more traditional goods and services such as cooking fuels, animal fodder and bedding. A challenge in community forest (CF) management is to realize their carbon value without compromising their role in the provision of these traditional goods and services. In this study of CF dominated by <i>Pinus roxburg ...[more]

PMID: 30867985

Similar Datasets

Project description:Understanding the effects of plant species diversity and trait composition on aboveground biomass is a central focus of ecology and has important implications for biodiversity conservation. However, the simultaneous direct and indirect effects of soil nutrients, species asynchrony, functional trait diversity, and trait composition for explaining the community temporal stability of aboveground biomass remain underrepresented in natural forests. Here, we hypothesized that species asynchrony relative to soil nutrients, functional trait diversity, and trait composition plays a central role in stabilizing the community temporal stability of natural forests. We tested this hypothesis using a structural equation model based on 10-year continuous monitoring data (i.e., three-time repeated forest inventories) in both second-growth and old-growth temperate forests in northeast China. Our results showed that the community temporal stability of aboveground biomass was driven by a strong direct positive effect of species asynchrony in both second-growth and old-growth temperate forests, whereas functional trait diversity and composition (i.e. community-weighted mean of leaf nitrogen content) were of additional importance in an old-growth forest only. Functional trait diversity decreased community-weighted mean of leaf nitrogen content in an old-growth forest, whereas this relationship was non-significant in a second-growth forest. Soil nutrients had non-significant effects on the community temporal stability of both second-growth and old-growth forests. Species asynchrony was the direct determinant of the community temporal stability of aboveground biomass in temperate forests. The direct effect of species asynchrony increased with forest succession, implying that temporal niche differentiation and facilitation increase over time. This study suggests that managing forests with mixtures of both early and late successional species or shade intolerant and tolerant species, not only species diversity, is important for maintaining forest stability in a changing environment. We argue that the species asynchrony effect is crucial to understand the underlying ecological mechanisms for a diversity-biomass relationship in natural forests.

Dataset Information

Aboveground carbon of community-managed Chirpine (Pinus roxburghii Sarg.) forests of Nepal based on stand types and geographic aspects.

Publications

Aboveground carbon of community-managed Chirpine (<i>Pinus roxburghii</i> Sarg.) forests of Nepal based on stand types and geographic aspects.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets