Abstract
It is strongly debated whether bamboo forest ecosystems are a carbon sink or a carbon source because of insufficient knowledge regarding carbon loss via CO2 emissions from these forests. The surface area (S) of bamboo culms (stems) is important for estimating culm respiration, a major component of carbon cycling in bamboo forests. However, few studies have attempted to formulate predictive equations for S. In this study, we developed allometric equations for predicting S in three bamboo species grown in Kyushu Island, western Japan: Phyllostachys pubescens Mazel ex Houz., P. bambusoides Sieb. et Zucc. and P. nigra var. henonis. We used a power equation between S and diameter at breast height (D) and a linear equation between S and D × total culm length (H). The results indicated that P. bambusoides and P. nigra shared common site-independent equations. In contrast, P. pubescens required species-specific equations due to interspecific variation in culm slenderness and tapering. We also found that D was a better predictive variable than DH when quantifying S because of its satisfactory predictive performance and simplicity. These findings will be beneficial for evaluating the contribution of bamboo forest ecosystems to carbon cycling.
Highlights
Bamboo is a diverse plant group with nearly 1500 species across approximately 119 genera and is native to all continents except Antarctica and Europe [1,2]
Which predictive variable is better? We found that the DH-based equation, Equation (2), showed slightly higher r2 and smaller root mean square error (RMSE) and Akaike’s Information Criteria (AIC) than the D-based equation, Equation (1) (Table 3)
We developed allometric equations for predicting S in three Phyllostachys species grown in Kyushu Island, western Japan
Summary
Bamboo (family: Poaceae, subfamily: Bambusoideae) is a diverse plant group with nearly 1500 species across approximately 119 genera and is native to all continents except Antarctica and Europe [1,2]. Bamboo forests cover roughly 31.5 million hectares worldwide [2,3] and occupy approximately 1% of the total global forested area [4]. Many studies in the past decade have shown the potential of bamboo forests as a carbon sink (a process that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) [6,7,8,9,10,11]. There remains considerable debate whether bamboo forest ecosystems are a carbon sink or a carbon source (a process of releasing carbon dioxide to atmosphere) [12,13,14]. One possible reason for this uncertainty is insufficient knowledge regarding carbon loss via CO2 emissions from bamboo forests [14]
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