Abstract
BackgroundCarbon storage potential has become an important consideration for land management and planning in the United States. The ability to assess ecosystem carbon balance can help land managers understand the benefits and tradeoffs between different management strategies. This paper demonstrates an application of the Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS) model developed for local-scale land management at the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge. We estimate the net ecosystem carbon balance by considering past ecosystem disturbances resulting from storm damage, fire, and land management actions including hydrologic inundation, vegetation clearing, and replanting.ResultsWe modeled the annual ecosystem carbon stock and flow rates for the 30-year historic time period of 1985–2015, using age-structured forest growth curves and known data for disturbance events and management activities. The 30-year total net ecosystem production was estimated to be a net sink of 0.97 Tg C. When a hurricane and six historic fire events were considered in the simulation, the Great Dismal Swamp became a net source of 0.89 Tg C. The cumulative above and below-ground carbon loss estimated from the South One and Lateral West fire events totaled 1.70 Tg C, while management activities removed an additional 0.01 Tg C. The carbon loss in below-ground biomass alone totaled 1.38 Tg C, with the balance (0.31 Tg C) coming from above-ground biomass and detritus.ConclusionsNatural disturbances substantially impact net ecosystem carbon balance in the Great Dismal Swamp. Through alternative management actions such as re-wetting, below-ground biomass loss may have been avoided, resulting in the added carbon storage capacity of 1.38 Tg. Based on two model assumptions used to simulate the peat system, (a burn scar totaling 70 cm in depth, and the soil carbon accumulation rate of 0.36 t C/ha−1/year−1 for Atlantic white cedar), the total soil carbon loss from the South One and Lateral West fires would take approximately 1740 years to re-amass. Due to the impractical time horizon this presents for land managers, this particular loss is considered permanent. Going forward, the baseline carbon stock and flow parameters presented here will be used as reference conditions to model future scenarios of land management and disturbance.
Highlights
Carbon storage potential has become an important consideration for land management and planning in the United States
Agentbased models such as UrbanSim and Swarm [10, 11] use “agents” to calculate the behavior of human actors. These models are designed to answer specific land management questions but are often limited in scalability to other geographic areas. Cellular automata models such as SLEUTH [12] and CLUE-S [13] use transition rules determined by the spatial neighborhood of adjacent cells and have been used for multiple applications, but lack rule-based successional trajectories that may occur after a disturbance
This paper demonstrates an application of the Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator (LUCAS) model [20] developed for local-level land management at the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), Great Dismal Swamp (GDS) National Wildlife Refuge in Virginia
Summary
There are fewer examples of land change models that meet the same comprehensive criteria [7] because land change models commonly require data to reflect human behavior, land management preferences, and socio-economic indicators. These data are often unique to local conditions and difficult to scale up or apply to larger regions. Agentbased models such as UrbanSim and Swarm [10, 11] use “agents” to calculate the behavior of human actors (e.g. land managers, farmers, developers) These models are designed to answer specific land management questions but are often limited in scalability to other geographic areas. Cellular automata models such as SLEUTH [12] and CLUE-S [13] use transition rules determined by the spatial neighborhood of adjacent cells and have been used for multiple applications, but lack rule-based successional trajectories that may occur after a disturbance
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