Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks.

Old-growth forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at rates that vary with climate and nitrogen deposition. The sequestered carbon dioxide is stored in live woody tissues and slowly decomposing organic matter in litter and soil. Old-growth forests therefore serve as a global carbon dioxide sink, but they are not protected by international treaties, because it is generally thought that ageing forests cease to accumulate carbon. Here we report a search of literature and databases for forest carbon-flux estimates. We find that in forests between 15 and 800 years of age, net ecosystem productivity (the net carbon balance of the forest including soils) is usually positive. Our results demonstrate that old-growth forests can continue to accumulate carbon, contrary to the long-standing view that they are carbon neutral. Over 30 per cent of the global forest area is unmanaged primary forest, and this area contains the remaining old-growth forests. Half of the primary forests (6 x 10(8) hectares) are located in the boreal and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. On the basis of our analysis, these forests alone sequester about 1.3 +/- 0.5 gigatonnes of carbon per year. Thus, our findings suggest that 15 per cent of the global forest area, which is currently not considered when offsetting increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, provides at least 10 per cent of the global net ecosystem productivity. Old-growth forests accumulate carbon for centuries and contain large quantities of it. We expect, however, that much of this carbon, even soil carbon, will move back to the atmosphere if these forests are disturbed.

Scaling wood volume estimates from inventory plots to landscapes with airborne LiDAR in temperate deciduous forest.

BACKGROUND: Monitoring and managing carbon stocks in forested ecosystems requires accurate and repeatable quantification of the spatial distribution of wood volume at landscape to regional scales. Grid-based forest inventory networks have provided valuable records of forest structure and dynamics at individual plot scales, but in isolation they may not represent the carbon dynamics of heterogeneous landscapes encompassing diverse land-management strategies and site conditions. Airborne LiDAR has greatly enhanced forest structural characterisation and, in conjunction with field-based inventories, it provides avenues for monitoring carbon over broader spatial scales. Here we aim to enhance the integration of airborne LiDAR surveying with field-based inventories by exploring the effect of inventory plot size and number on the relationship between field-estimated and LiDAR-predicted wood volume in deciduous broad-leafed forest in central Germany. RESULTS: Estimation of wood volume from airborne LiDAR was most robust (R2 = 0.92, RMSE = 50.57 m3 ha-1 ~14.13 Mg C ha-1) when trained and tested with 1 ha experimental plot data (n = 50). Predictions based on a more extensive (n = 1100) plot network with considerably smaller (0.05 ha) plots were inferior (R2 = 0.68, RMSE = 101.01 ~28.09 Mg C ha-1). Differences between the 1 and 0.05 ha volume models from LiDAR were negligible however at the scale of individual land-management units. Sample size permutation tests showed that increasing the number of inventory plots above 350 for the 0.05 ha plots returned no improvement in R2 and RMSE variability of the LiDAR-predicted wood volume model. CONCLUSIONS: Our results from this study confirm the utility of LiDAR for estimating wood volume in deciduous broad-leafed forest, but highlight the challenges associated with field plot size and number in establishing robust relationships between airborne LiDAR and field derived wood volume. We are moving into a forest management era where field-inventory and airborne LiDAR are inextricably linked, and we encourage field inventory campaigns to strive for increased plot size and give greater attention to precise stem geolocation for better integration with remote sensing strategies.

Global potential of biospheric carbon management for climate mitigation.

Elevated concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gases (GHGs), particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), have affected the global climate. Land-based biological carbon mitigation strategies are considered an important and viable pathway towards climate stabilization. However, to satisfy the growing demands for food, wood products, energy, climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation-all of which compete for increasingly limited quantities of biomass and land-the deployment of mitigation strategies must be driven by sustainable and integrated land management. If executed accordingly, through avoided emissions and carbon sequestration, biological carbon and bioenergy mitigation could save up to 38 billion tonnes of carbon and 3-8% of estimated energy consumption, respectively, by 2050.

Temporal variation in δ13C, wood density and microfibril angle in variously irrigated Eucalyptus nitens.

Wood can serve as a record of past climate, recording tree responses to changing conditions. It is also valuable in understanding tree responses to environment to optimise forest management. Stable carbon isotope ratios (δ13C), wood density and microfibril angle (MFA) are potentially useful wood property parameters for these purposes. The goal of this study was to understand how δ13C varied over time in response to cycles of soil drying and wetting and to variation in temperature in Eucalyptus nitens Deane & Maiden, in concert with wood density and MFA. δ13C increases did not necessarily occur when water stress was highest, but, rather, when it was relieved. Our hypothesis is that this was a result of the use of previously fixed carbohydrate reserves when growth and metabolic activity was resumed after a period of dormancy. MFA in particular showed concomitant temporal variation with δ13C. A peak in δ13C may not coincide temporally with an increase in water stress, but with a decrease, when higher growth rates enable the final incorporation of earlier stored photosynthate into mature wood. This has implications for using δ13C as a tool to understand past environmental conditions using radial measurements of wood properties. However, interpreting this data with other wood properties may be helpful for understanding past tree responses.

The potential for rising CO2 to account for the observed uptake of carbon by tropical, temperate, and boreal forest biomes.

We compiled, measured and simulated estimates of NPP and NBP for Amazonian tropical, European temperate, and Siberian Boreal forests from intensive stand-scale field studies, extensive forest biomass inventories, regional atmospheric inversions, and global ecosystem models. We analysed the random and systematic sources of uncertainties pertaining to each approach when comparing their results, and showed that estimates of NPP from different data streams are robustly comparable within their errors. Although NPP increases by a factor of four between Siberia and the Amazon, NBP is larger in Europe than elsewhere, demonstrating that carbon sequestration does not correlate with NPP. We analysed the NPP:NBP ratios in terms of the role of CO2 fertilization. Our results show that the tropical forest NBP carbon sink can be entirely explained by a CO2-induced enhancement of NPP, whereas such a mechanism can only account for 10% of the European sink and up to 50% of Siberian sink. Europe and Siberia are the two regions where factors other than CO, are likely to be dominant in controlling the sequestration of carbon by forest ecosystems, such as management practice, climate, nitrogen deposition, and variation in disturbance regimes.

Short Communication: Leaf trait relationships in Australian plant species.

Leaf trait data were compiled for 258 Australian plant species from several habitat types dominated by woody perennials. Specific leaf area (SLA), photosynthetic capacity, dark respiration rate and leaf nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) concentrations were positively correlated with one another and negatively correlated with average leaf lifespan. These trait relationships were consistent with previous results from global datasets. Together, these traits form a spectrum of variation running from species with cheap but frequently replaced leaves to those with strategies more attuned to a nutrient-conserving lifestyle. Australian species tended to have SLAs at the lower end of the spectrum, as expected in a dataset dominated by sclerophyllous species from low fertility or low rainfall sites. The existence of broad-scale, 'global' relationships does not imply that the same trait relationships will always be observed in small datasets. In particular, the probability of observing concordant patterns depends on the range of trait variation in a dataset, which, itself, may vary with sample size or species-sampling properties such as the range of growth forms, plant functional 'types', or taxa included in a particular study. The considerable scatter seen in these broad-scale trait relationships may be associated with climate, physiology and phylogeny.

Europe's terrestrial biosphere absorbs 7 to 12% of European anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Most inverse atmospheric models report considerable uptake of carbon dioxide in Europe's terrestrial biosphere. In contrast, carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems increase at a much smaller rate, with carbon gains in forests and grassland soils almost being offset by carbon losses from cropland and peat soils. Accounting for non-carbon dioxide carbon transfers that are not detected by the atmospheric models and for carbon dioxide fluxes bypassing the ecosystem carbon stocks considerably reduces the gap between the small carbon-stock changes and the larger carbon dioxide uptake estimated by atmospheric models. The remaining difference could be because of missing components in the stock-change approach, as well as the large uncertainty in both methods. With the use of the corrected atmosphere- and land-based estimates as a dual constraint, we estimate a net carbon sink between 135 and 205 teragrams per year in Europe's terrestrial biosphere, the equivalent of 7 to 12% of the 1995 anthropogenic carbon emissions.