Stand structure and recent climate change constrain stand basal area change in European forests: a comparison across boreal, temperate and Mediterranean biomes
Authors
Ruiz Benito, PalomaIdentifiers
Permanent link (URI): http://hdl.handle.net/10017/20881DOI: 10.1007/s10021-014-9806-0
ISSN: 1432-9840
Publisher
Springer
Date
2014Bibliographic citation
Ecosystems, 2014, v. 17, n. 8, p. 1439-1454
Keywords
Carbon sink
Climatic variability
Competition
Inventory-based data
Minimum temperature
Mixed models
Water availability
Stand basal area change
Project
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/FP7/ENV-2008-1-226701
AP2008-01325 (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia)
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Publisher's version
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10021-014-9806-0Rights
(c) Springer, 2014
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
European forests have a prominent role in the global carbon cycle and an increase in
carbon storage has been consistently reported during the 20th century. Any further
increase in forest carbon storage, however, could be hampered by increases in aridity
and extreme climatic events. Here we use forest inventory data to identify the relative
importance of stand structure (stand basal area and mean d.b.h.), mean climate (water
availability) and recent climate change (temperature and precipitation anomalies) on
forest basal area change during the late 20th century in three major European biomes.
Using linear mixed-effects models we observed that stand structure, mean climate and
recent climatic change strongly interact to modulate basal area change. Although we
observed a net increment in stand basal area during the late 20th century, we found the
highest basal area increments in forests with medium stand basal areas and small to
medium sized trees. Stand basal area increases correlated positively with water
availability, and were enhanced in warmer areas. Recent climatic warming caused an
increase in stand basal area, but this increase was offset by water availability. Based on
recent trends in basal area change we conclude that the potential rate of aboveground
carbon accumulation in European forests strongly depends on both stand structure and
concomitant climate warming, adding weight to suggestions that European carbon
stocks may saturate in the near future.
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stand_ruiz_ecosystems_2014.pdf | 2.794Mb |
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