Pattern and control of biomass allocation across global forest ecosystems.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Jiang Y
PROVIDER: S-EPMC5528249 | biostudies-other | 2017 Jul
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
Similar Datasets
Project description:Non-forest ecosystems, dominated by shrubs, grasses and herbaceous plants, provide ecosystem services including carbon sequestration and forage for grazing, and are highly sensitive to climatic changes. Yet these ecosystems are poorly represented in remotely sensed biomass products and are undersampled by in situ monitoring. Current global change threats emphasize the need for new tools to capture biomass change in non-forest ecosystems at appropriate scales. Here we developed and deployed a new protocol for photogrammetric height using unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) images to test its capability for delivering standardized measurements of biomass across a globally distributed field experiment. We assessed whether canopy height inferred from UAV photogrammetry allows the prediction of aboveground biomass (AGB) across low-stature plant species by conducting 38 photogrammetric surveys over 741 harvested plots to sample 50 species. We found mean canopy height was strongly predictive of AGB across species, with a median adjusted R 2 of 0.87 (ranging from 0.46 to 0.99) and median prediction error from leave-one-out cross-validation of 3.9%. Biomass per-unit-of-height was similar within but different among, plant functional types. We found that photogrammetric reconstructions of canopy height were sensitive to wind speed but not sun elevation during surveys. We demonstrated that our photogrammetric approach produced generalizable measurements across growth forms and environmental settings and yielded accuracies as good as those obtained from in situ approaches. We demonstrate that using a standardized approach for UAV photogrammetry can deliver accurate AGB estimates across a wide range of dynamic and heterogeneous ecosystems. Many academic and land management institutions have the technical capacity to deploy these approaches over extents of 1-10 ha-1. Photogrammetric approaches could provide much-needed information required to calibrate and validate the vegetation models and satellite-derived biomass products that are essential to understand vulnerable and understudied non-forested ecosystems around the globe.
| S-EPMC9290598 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Shrubs play an important role in the global carbon cycle and are particularly sensitive to climate change. However, the altitudinal pattern of biomass allocation in mountainous shrubs and its responses to climate change are still unclear. In this study, biomass accumulation and allocation of the shrub community and their relationships with climatic factors were investigated in 331 sampling sites along an extensive altitudinal gradient (311-4911 m) in Southwest China. The results showed that the above-ground biomass (AGB) and the total biomass (TB) of the shrub community decreased quadratically (R2 = 0.107) and linearly (R2 = 0.024) from 9.86 to 0.15 kg·m-2 and 15.61 to 0.26 kg·m-2 with increasing altitude, respectively. However, the below-ground biomass (BGB) and TB of the herb layer increased quadratically with increasing altitudes (R2 = 0.136 and 0.122, respectively. P<0.001). The root/shoot ratio (R/S) of the community and its component synusiae increased gradually with increasing altitudes (P<0.001). The standardized major axis (SMA) indicated an isometric relationship between AGB and BGB for the whole shrub community, but allometric relationships were found for the shrub and herb layer. Redundancy analysis and Pearson correlation analysis showed that the biomass and R/S were significantly correlated with mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation (MAP) and reconnaissance drought index (RDI). These findings indicate that shrub biomass allocation is strongly affected by the altitude, MAT and MAP and support the isometric relationship of AGB and BGB partitioning at the community level on mountainous shrub biomes.
| S-EPMC7580895 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Forests act as major sinks for atmospheric CO2. An understanding of the relationship between forest biomass allocation and precipitation gradients is needed to estimate the impacts of changes in precipitation on carbon stores. Biomass patterns depend on tree size or age, making it unclear whether biomass allocation is limited by tree age at regional scales. Using a dataset of ten typical forest types spanning a large age scale, we evaluated forest biomass allocation-precipitation correlations with the aim of testing whether biomass allocation patterns vary systematically in response to altered precipitation. With increasing mean annual precipitation, a significant quadratic increase occurred in ?30?yr and >60?yr groups in stem biomass, >60?yr group in branch biomass, and >60?yr groups in leaf biomass; and a significant cubic increase occurred in 30-60?yr and all age forest groups in stem biomass, ?30?yr, 30-60?yr and all age forest groups in branch biomass, ?30?yr and all age forest groups in leaf biomass, and in each group in root biomass, indicating that organ biomass is strongly limited by precipitation. Thus, forest biomass responds predictably to changes in mean annual precipitation. The results suggest that forest organ biomass-precipitation relationships hold across independent datasets that encompass a broad climatic range and forest age.
| S-EPMC6043570 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Coverage rate, a critical variable for gridded forest area, has been neglected by previous studies in estimating the annual gross primary production (GPP) of global forest ecosystems. In this study, we investigated to what extent the coverage rate could impact forest GPP estimates from 1982 to 2011. Here we show that the traditional calculation without considering the coverage rate globally overestimated the forest gross carbon dioxide uptake by approximately 8.7%, with a value of 5.12 ± 0.23 Pg C yr(-1), which is equivalent to 48% of the annual emissions from anthropogenic activities in 2012. Actually, the global annual GPP of forest ecosystems is approximately 53.71 ± 4.83 Pg C yr(-1) for the past 30 years by taking the coverage rate into account. Accordingly, we argue that forest annual GPP calculated by previous studies has been overestimated due to the exaggerated forest area, and therefore, coverage rate may be a required factor to further quantify the global carbon cycle.
| S-EPMC4603761 | biostudies-other
Project description:Biomass estimation is one of the crucial tasks of forest ecology. Drying tree material is a crucial stage of preparing biomass estimation tools. However, at this step researchers use different drying temperatures, but we do not know how this influences accuracy of models. We aimed to assess differences in dry biomass between two drying temperatures (75 °C and 105 °C) in tree biomass components and to provide coefficients allowing for recalculation between the given temperatures. We used a set of 1440 samples from bark, branches, foliage and wood of eight European tree species: Abies alba Mill., Alnus glutinosa (L.) Gaertn., Betula pendula Roth., Fagus sylvatica L., Larix decidua Mill., Picea abies (L.) H. Karst., Pinus sylvestris L. and Quercus robur L. The differences between drying temperatures were 1.67%, 1.76%, 2.20% and 0.96% of sample dry masses of bark, branches, foliage and stem wood, respectively. Tree species influenced these differences. Our study provided coefficients allowing for recalculation of masses between the two temperatures, to unify results from different studies. However, the difference in dry mass between the two temperatures studied is lower than the range of uncertainty of biomass models, thus its influence on results of large-scale biomass assessments is low.
| S-EPMC7525458 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The precise and accurate quantitative evaluation of the temporal and spatial pattern of carbon (C) storage in forest ecosystems is critical for understanding the role of forests in the global terrestrial C cycle and is essential for formulating forest management policies to combat climate change. In this study, we examined the C dynamics of forest ecosystems in Shaanxi, northwest China, based on four forest inventories (1989-1993, 1994-1998, 1999-2003, and 2004-2008) and field-sampling measurements (2012). The results indicate that the total C storage of forest ecosystems in Shaanxi increased by approximately 29.3%, from 611.72 Tg in 1993 to 790.75 Tg in 2008, partially as a result of ecological restoration projects. The spatial pattern of C storage in forest ecosystems mainly exhibited a latitude-zonal distribution across the province, increasing from north (high latitude) to south (low latitude) generally, which signifies the effect of environmental conditions, chiefly water and heat related factors, on forest growth and C sequestration. In addition, different data sources and estimation methods had a significant effect on the results obtained, with the C stocks in 2008 being considerably overestimated (864.55 Tg) and slightly underestimated (778.07 Tg) when measured using the mean C density method and integrated method, respectively. Overall, our results demonstrated that the forest ecosystem in Shaanxi acted as a C sink over the last few decades. However, further studies should be carried out with a focus on adaption of plants to environmental factors along with forest management for vegetation restoration to maximize the C sequestration potential and to better cope with climate change.
| S-EPMC4564278 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Forest biomass is an essential indicator for monitoring the Earth's ecosystems and climate. It is a critical input to greenhouse gas accounting, estimation of carbon losses and forest degradation, assessment of renewable energy potential, and for developing climate change mitigation policies such as REDD+, among others. Wall-to-wall mapping of aboveground biomass (AGB) is now possible with satellite remote sensing (RS). However, RS methods require extant, up-to-date, reliable, representative and comparable in situ data for calibration and validation. Here, we present the Forest Observation System (FOS) initiative, an international cooperation to establish and maintain a global in situ forest biomass database. AGB and canopy height estimates with their associated uncertainties are derived at a 0.25?ha scale from field measurements made in permanent research plots across the world's forests. All plot estimates are geolocated and have a size that allows for direct comparison with many RS measurements. The FOS offers the potential to improve the accuracy of RS-based biomass products while developing new synergies between the RS and ground-based ecosystem research communities.
| S-EPMC6787017 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Carbon stocks in vegetation have a key role in the climate system. However, the magnitude, patterns and uncertainties of carbon stocks and the effect of land use on the stocks remain poorly quantified. Here we show, using state-of-the-art datasets, that vegetation currently stores around 450 petagrams of carbon. In the hypothetical absence of land use, potential vegetation would store around 916 petagrams of carbon, under current climate conditions. This difference highlights the massive effect of land use on biomass stocks. Deforestation and other land-cover changes are responsible for 53-58% of the difference between current and potential biomass stocks. Land management effects (the biomass stock changes induced by land use within the same land cover) contribute 42-47%, but have been underestimated in the literature. Therefore, avoiding deforestation is necessary but not sufficient for mitigation of climate change. Our results imply that trade-offs exist between conserving carbon stocks on managed land and raising the contribution of biomass to raw material and energy supply for the mitigation of climate change. Efforts to raise biomass stocks are currently verifiable only in temperate forests, where their potential is limited. By contrast, large uncertainties hinder verification in the tropical forest, where the largest potential is located, pointing to challenges for the upcoming stocktaking exercises under the Paris agreement.
| S-EPMC5756473 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Casuarina equisetifolia is commonly planted and used in the construction of coastal shelterbelt protection in Hainan Island. Thus, it is critical to accurately estimate the tree biomass of Casuarina equisetifolia L. for forest managers to evaluate the biomass stock in Hainan. The data for this work consisted of 72 trees, which were divided into three age groups: young forest, middle-aged forest, and mature forest. The proportion of biomass from the trunk significantly increased with age (P<0.05). However, the biomass of the branch and leaf decreased, and the biomass of the root did not change. To test whether the crown radius (CR) can improve biomass estimates of C. equisetifolia, we introduced CR into the biomass models. Here, six models were used to estimate the biomass of each component, including the trunk, the branch, the leaf, and the root. In each group, we selected one model among these six models for each component. The results showed that including the CR greatly improved the model performance and reduced the error, especially for the young and mature forests. In addition, to ensure biomass additivity, the selected equation for each component was fitted as a system of equations using seemingly unrelated regression (SUR). The SUR method not only gave efficient and accurate estimates but also achieved the logical additivity. The results in this study provide a robust estimation of tree biomass components and total biomass over three groups of C. equisetifolia.
| S-EPMC4803337 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Whether the fraction of total forest biomass distributed in roots, stems, or leaves varies systematically across geographic gradients remains unknown despite its importance for understanding forest ecology and modeling global carbon cycles. It has been hypothesized that plants should maintain proportionally more biomass in the organ that acquires the most limiting resource. Accordingly, we hypothesize greater biomass distribution in roots and less in stems and foliage in increasingly arid climates and in colder environments at high latitudes. Such a strategy would increase uptake of soil water in dry conditions and of soil nutrients in cold soils, where they are at low supply and are less mobile. We use a large global biomass dataset (>6,200 forests from 61 countries, across a 40 °C gradient in mean annual temperature) to address these questions. Climate metrics involving temperature were better predictors of biomass partitioning than those involving moisture availability, because, surprisingly, fractional distribution of biomass to roots or foliage was unrelated to aridity. In contrast, in increasingly cold climates, the proportion of total forest biomass in roots was greater and in foliage was smaller for both angiosperm and gymnosperm forests. These findings support hypotheses about adaptive strategies of forest trees to temperature and provide biogeographically explicit relationships to improve ecosystem and earth system models. They also will allow, for the first time to our knowledge, representations of root carbon pools that consider biogeographic differences, which are useful for quantifying whole-ecosystem carbon stocks and cycles and for assessing the impact of climate change on forest carbon dynamics.
| S-EPMC4183289 | biostudies-literature