Fire suppression and ecosystem carbon storage
TL;DR: A 35-year controlled burning experiment in Minnesota oak savanna showed that fire frequency had a great impact on ecosystem carbon (C) stores, with most carbon stored in woody biomass.
Abstract: A 35-year controlled burning experiment in Minnesota oak savanna showed that fire frequency had a great impact on ecosystem carbon (C) stores. Specifically, compared to the historical fire regime, fire suppression led to an average of 1.8 Mg·ha−1·yr−1 of C storage, with most carbon stored in woody biomass. Forest floor carbon stores were also significantly impacted by fire frequency, but there were no detectable effects of fire suppression on carbon in soil and fine roots combined, or in woody debris. Total ecosystem C stores averaged ∼110 Mg/ha in stands experiencing presettlement fire frequencies, but ∼220 Mg/ha in stands experiencing fire suppression. If comparable rates of C storage were to occur in other ecosystems in response to the current extent of fire suppression in the United States, fire suppression in the USA might account for 8–20% of missing global carbon.
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TL;DR: Evidence for the factors underlying the historical and contemporary distributions of North American tree species are reviewed and it is argued that a cohesive conceptual framework must be informed by an understanding of species ecological and evolutionary history.
Abstract: Species distributions have often been assumed to represent climatic limitations, yet recent evidence has challenged these assumptions and emphasized the potential importance of biotic interactions, dispersal limitation, and disturbance. Despite significant investigation into these factors, an integrated understanding of where and when they may be important is lacking. Here, we review evidence for the factors underlying the historical and contemporary distributions of North American tree species and argue that a cohesive conceptual framework must be informed by an understanding of species ecological and evolutionary history. We further demonstrate that available evidence offers little indication of a significant, independent influence of biotic interactions or dispersal limitation on species distributions. Disturbance may provide important constraints on distributions in limited contexts. Overall, historic and contemporary evidence suggests that species distributions are strongly influenced by climate, yet examples of disequilibrium with climate abound. We propose that differences among life stages and the impacts of human land use may contribute to explain these inconsistencies and are deserving of greater research attention.
19 citations
Cites background from "Fire suppression and ecosystem carb..."
...…have also been shown to directly limit tree distributions at the mid- ❖ www.esajournals.org 17 June 2017 ❖ Volume 8(6) ❖ Article e01853 continent prairie–forest boundary (Curtis 1959, Tilman et al. 2000, Bond et al. 2005) and at the lower treeline in the Rocky Mountains (Mast et al. 1997, 1998)....
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01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: In this paper, DeFries et al. showed an index of carbon uptake in forests based on forest cover from satellite observations and growing season length (with longer growing seasons indicating a higher carbon uptake potential).
Abstract: The International Geosphere Biosphere Program report on mountain ecosystems stresses the potential role of mountainous regions in the Earth’s geophysical cycles (Becker and Bugmann 2001). However, mountain environments have rarely been addressed specifically in studies of terrestrial carbon dynamics. Although it was first suggested that the US carbon sink was localized in eastern US forests (Fan et al. 1998), more recent studies that partition the US sink into specific regions suggest that a significant fraction is located in the western US (Schimel et al. 2000; Pacala et al. 2001 ; Schimel et al. 2002). As increasing development puts pressure on arable lands in North America and Temperate Asia, forests and other high carbon storage ecosystems are increasingly relegated to mountain landscapes. Inspection of recent land cover databases (e.g. IGBP or DeFries et al. 2000) shows clearly that in Temperate North America, Europe and China, a large fraction of forested landscapes is found in major and minor mountain ranges. Figure 1 shows an index of carbon uptake in forests based on forest cover from satellite observations (Defries et al. 2000) and growing season length (with longer growing seasons indicating a higher carbon uptake potential). Growing season lengths are scaled to eddy covariance estimates of carbon uptake per growing season day (Falge et al. 2002). Since the majority of current terrestrial sinks are found in the Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes, montane forests have the potential to contribute significantly to current carbon sinks.
19 citations
25 Sep 2002
TL;DR: Johnson et al. as mentioned in this paper examined the importance of natural disturbance in shaping forest landscapes and the relationship between aboveground impacts and mineral soil carbon dynamics, and found that these altered disturbance events have already affected many of the forests within the United States.
Abstract: Forest soils are entities within themselves, self-organized and highly resilient over time. The transfer of energy bound in carbon (C) molecules drives the organization and functions of this biological system (Fisher and Binkley, 2000; Paul and Clark, 1996). Photosynthetic organisms reduce atmospheric C and store energy from solar radiation in the formation of complex C molecules. This bound energy is transferred to mineral soil in the form of litterfall, root turnover, and root exudates supporting an intricate detrital trophic structure (Fisher, 1995). Much of the C moving through this detrital food web is released annually back to the atmosphere as CO2 from respiration (see Chapter 7), but resident in the mineral soil is a large pool of C that is recalcitrant to decomposition. Interest in the ability of forest soils to store atmospheric C derived from anthropogenic sources has grown in recent years (Johnson, 1992; Heath and Smith, 2000; Cardon et al., 2001; Johnson and Curtis, 2001). Prior to the 1920s, deforestation was the primary source of increasing atmospheric C, but has since been surpassed by fossil fuel combustion (Vitousek, 1991). Reduced harvests on National Forest lands and reforestation on abandoned agricultural lands since the 1950s have increased some terrestrial C pools in the United States (Houghton et. al. 1999), yet this increase may be at risk due to altered temporal and spatial scales of disturbances (Murray et al., 2000). The extent to which these altered disturbance events have already affected many of the forests within the United States is considerable (see Chapter 2). This paper examines the importance of natural disturbance in shaping forest landscapes and the relationship between aboveground impacts and mineral soil carbon dynamics.
18 citations
Cites background from "Fire suppression and ecosystem carb..."
...Tillman et al. (2000) showed significant accumulation of C in tree biomass and coarse roots as the result of fire suppression in a Minnesota oak savanna compared to moderate and high frequency fire events....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors used multivariate analysis of monitoring data collected before and after 21 fires over 16 years in fire-suppressed xeric pine-oak forests in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to assess how community composition and structure change after prescribed fire, to what degree changes after fire persist over time, and how the impacts of prescribed fire vary with fire severity and site environment.
17 citations
25 Sep 2002
TL;DR: In this paper, the impact of fire on soil carbon pools, recovery after fire, the effects of a fire-suppression policy on soil C, methods to estimate C losses from fire, and the implications of fire management on soil cycling and sequestration are discussed.
Abstract: This chapter discusses the impact of fire on soil carbon (C) pools, recovery after fire, the effects of a fire-suppression policy on soil C, methods to estimate C losses from fire, and the implications of fire management on soil C cycling and sequestration. Fire temperature, expressed as maximum ground temperature, is an important variable in soil C loss. While most soil C is lost as a direct result of the combustion process, changes in the decomposition rate of soil organic matter can also play a key role in C storage. Many wildfires burn hotter than most prescribed fires and are associated with greater losses of soil C. Many ecosystems, particularly in the western United States, are overloaded with surface fuels that have accumulated from fire suppression. A lowering of soil productivity after fire would reduce future soil C sequestration, since biomass production in the subsequent stands would be less.
17 citations
References
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06 Mar 1997
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a perspective of the global cycle of nitrogen and phosphorous, the global water cycle, and the global sulfur cycle from a global point of view.
Abstract: Part 1 Processes and reactions: origins the atmosphere the lithosphere the terrestrial biosphere biogeochemical cycling on land biogeochemistry in freshwater wetlands and lakes rivers and estuaries the sea. Part 2 Global cycles: the global water cycle the global carbon cycle the global cycle of nitrogen and phosphorous the global sulfur cycle a perspective.
3,871 citations
TL;DR: Slowing deforestation, combined with an increase in forestation and other management measures to improve forest ecosystem productivity, could conserve or sequester significant quantities of carbon.
Abstract: Forest systems cover more than 4.1 x 109 hectares of the Earth9s land area. Globally, forest vegetation and soils contain about 1146 petagrams of carbon, with approximately 37 percent of this carbon in low-latitude forests, 14 percent in mid-latitudes, and 49 percent at high latitudes. Over two-thirds of the carbon in forest ecosystems is contained in soils and associated peat deposits. In 1990, deforestation in the low latitudes emitted 1.6 ± 0.4 petagrams of carbon per year, whereas forest area expansion and growth in mid- and high-latitude forest sequestered 0.7 ± 0.2 petagrams of carbon per year, for a net flux to the atmosphere of 0.9 ± 0.4 petagrams of carbon per year. Slowing deforestation, combined with an increase in forestation and other management measures to improve forest ecosystem productivity, could conserve or sequester significant quantities of carbon. Future forest carbon cycling trends attributable to losses and regrowth associated with global climate and land-use change are uncertain. Model projections and some results suggest that forests could be carbon sinks or sources in the future.
3,175 citations
"Fire suppression and ecosystem carb..." refers background or methods in this paper
...…biomass creates ;20–25% of annual anthropogenic CO2 (Andreae 1991, Schimel 1995), modifications of fire frequency may significantly change regional and global C budgets (e.g., Fahenstock and Agee 1983, Andreae 1991, Stocks 1991, Dixon and Krankina 1993, Dixon et al. 1994, Sohngen and Haynes 1997)....
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...This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant 9411972 and by the Andrew Mellon Foundation....
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...Our work supports the proposal that increased fire suppression and decreased anthropogenic burning of vegetation could significantly influence global carbon dynamics (Dixon et al. 1994, Sampson and Clark 1995, Sohngen and Haynes 1997, San Jose et al. 1998)....
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...Dixon et al. (1994) calculated that fire management in Russia could lead to long-term C storage of 0.6 3 1015 g C/yr....
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TL;DR: The terrestrial biosphere plays an important role in the global carbon cycle as mentioned in this paper, which is the fluxes of carbon among four main reservoirs: fossil carbon, the atmosphere, the oceans, and the terrestrial Biosphere.
Abstract: The terrestrial biosphere plays an important role in the global carbon cycle. In the 1994 Intergovernmental Panel Assessment on Climate Change (IPCC), an effort was made to improve the quantification of terrestrial exchanges and potential feedbacks from climate, changing CO2, and other factors; this paper presents the key results from that assessment, together with expanded discussion. The carbon cycle is the fluxes of carbon among four main reservoirs: fossil carbon, the atmosphere, the oceans, and the terrestrial biosphere. Emissions of fossil carbon during the 1980s averaged 5.5 Gt y−1. During the same period, the atmosphere gained 3.2 Gt C y−1 and the oceans are believed to have absorbed 2.0 Gt C y−1. The regrowing forests of the Northern Hemisphere may have absorbed 0.5 Gt C y−1 during this period. Meanwhile, tropical deforestation is thought to have released an average 1.6 Gt C y−1 over the 1980s. While the fluxes among the four pools should balance, the average 198Ds values lead to a ‘missing sink’ of 1.4 Gt C y−1 Several processes, including forest regrowth, CO2 fertilization of plant growth (c. 1.0 Gt C y−1), N deposition (c. 0.6 Gt C y−1), and their interactions, may account for the budget imbalance. However, it remains difficult to quantify the influences of these separate but interactive processes. Uncertainties in the individual numbers are large, and are themselves poorly quantified. This paper presents detail beyond the IPCC assessment on procedures used to approximate the flux uncertainties.
Lack of knowledge about positive and negative feedbacks from the biosphere is a major limiting factor to credible simulations of future atmospheric CO2 concentrations. Analyses of the atmospheric gradients of CO2 and 13 CO2 concentrations provide increasingly strong evidence for terrestrial sinks, potentially distributed between Northern Hemisphere and tropical regions, but conclusive detection in direct biomass and soil measurements remains elusive.
Current regional-to-global terrestrial ecosystem models with coupled carbon and nitrogen cycles represent the effects of CO2 fertilization differently, but all suggest longterm responses to CO2 that are substantially smaller than potential leaf- or laboratory whole plant-level responses. Analyses of emissions and biogeochemical fluxes consistent with eventual stabilization of atmospheric CO2 concentrations are sensitive to the way in which biospheric feedbacks are modeled by c. 15%. Decisions about land use can have effects of 100s of Gt C over the next few centuries, with similarly significant effects on the atmosphere.
Critical areas for future research are continued measurements and analyses of atmospheric data (CO2 and 13CO2) to serve as large-scale constraints, process studies of the scaling from the photosynthetic response to CO2 to whole-ecosystem carbon storage, and rigorous quantification of the effects of changing land use on carbon storage.
1,510 citations
"Fire suppression and ecosystem carb..." refers background or methods in this paper
...2680 Key words: carbon storage; fire suppression; missing carbon; oak savanna....
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...San Jose et al. (1998) calculated that fire suppression, by causing the transformation of the 2.8 3 107 ha Venezuelan Orinoco Llanos from grassland to semideciduous forest, could lead to a C sink of 0.08 3 1015 g C/yr....
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...Atmospheric CO2 is currently accumulating at ;3.2 3 1015 g C/yr (Schimel 1995)....
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...Dixon et al. (1994) calculated that fire management in Russia could lead to long-term C storage of 0.6 3 1015 g C/yr....
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...Because the burning of ecosystem biomass creates ;20–25% of annual anthropogenic CO2 (Andreae 1991, Schimel 1995), modifications of fire frequency may significantly change regional and global C budgets (e.g., Fahenstock and Agee 1983, Andreae 1991, Stocks 1991, Dixon and Krankina 1993, Dixon et al.…...
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TL;DR: The first edition of Schlesinger's Biogeochemistry in 1991 was an early entry in the field of Earth system science/global change, and has since gained sufficient popularity and demand to merit a second, extensively revised edition.
Abstract: Compared to the well-established disciplines, the field of Earth system science/global change has relatively few books from which to choose. Of the small subset of books dealing specifically with biogeochemical aspects of global change, the first edition of Schlesinger's Biogeochemistry in 1991 was an early entry. It has since gained sufficient popularity and demand to merit a second, extensively revised edition.
The first part of the book provides a general introduction to biogeochemistry and cycles, and to the origin of elements, our planet, and life on Earth. It then describes the functioning and biogeochemistry of the atmosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and hydrosphere, including marine and freshwater systems. Although system function and features are stressed, the author begins to introduce global change topics, such as soil organic matter and global change in Chapter 5, and landscape and mass balance in Chapter 6.
1,075 citations
"Fire suppression and ecosystem carb..." refers background or methods in this paper
...This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant 9411972 and by the Andrew Mellon Foundation....
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...Moreover, the immense global extent of tropical savanna and woodland, 2.45 3 109 ha (Schlesinger 1997), suggests that even moderate fire suppression in this ecosystem type could provide a globally significant C sink....
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TL;DR: The rates at which lands in the United States were cleared for agriculture, abandoned, harvested for wood, and burned were reconstructed from historical data for the period 1700-1990 and used in a terrestrial carbon model to calculate annual changes in the amount of carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems, including wood products.
Abstract: The rates at which lands in the United States were cleared for agriculture, abandoned, harvested for wood, and burned were reconstructed from historical data for the period 1700-1990 and used in a terrestrial carbon model to calculate annual changes in the amount of carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystems, including wood products. Changes in land use released 27 +/- 6 petagrams of carbon to the atmosphere before 1945 and accumulated 2 +/- 2 petagrams of carbon after 1945, largely as a result of fire suppression and forest growth on abandoned farmlands. During the 1980s, the net flux of carbon attributable to land management offset 10 to 30 percent of U.S. fossil fuel emissions.
1,035 citations
"Fire suppression and ecosystem carb..." refers background or methods in this paper
...Houghton et al. (1999) estimated various sources of C storage in the United States....
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...Because fire suppression might lead to a period of C accumulation (Houghton et al. 1999), current fire suppression in the United States (Fig....
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...This work was supported by National Science Foundation Grant 9411972 and by the Andrew Mellon Foundation....
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...2680 Key words: carbon storage; fire suppression; missing carbon; oak savanna....
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