Abstract
Earthquakes can produce significant tree mortality, and consequently affect regional carbon dynamics. Unfortunately, detailed studies quantifying the influence of earthquake on forest mortality are currently rare. The committed forest biomass carbon loss associated with the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China is assessed by a synthetic approach in this study that integrated field investigation, remote sensing analysis, empirical models and Monte Carlo simulation. The newly developed approach significantly improved the forest disturbance evaluation by quantitatively defining the earthquake impact boundary and detailed field survey to validate the mortality models. Based on our approach, a total biomass carbon of 10.9 Tg∙C was lost in Wenchuan earthquake, which offset 0.23% of the living biomass carbon stock in Chinese forests. Tree mortality was highly clustered at epicenter, and declined rapidly with distance away from the fault zone. It is suggested that earthquakes represent a significant driver to forest carbon dynamics, and the earthquake-induced biomass carbon loss should be included in estimating forest carbon budgets.
Highlights
Earthquakes are critical disturbances to forest ecosystems in tectonically active areas, causing extensive environmental degradation and substantial loss of biodiversity [1]
AAremote regional forest biomass loss associated with the. It was calculated by regional forest biomass loss associated with the Wenchuan earthquake
It was calculated by subtracting subtracting post-earthquake from pre-earthquake values post-earthquake green vegetation (GV) (2008) from pre-earthquake GV (2007)
Summary
Earthquakes are critical disturbances to forest ecosystems in tectonically active areas, causing extensive environmental degradation and substantial loss of biodiversity [1]. Through surface faulting and ground shaking, earthquakes induce extensive forest loss. It can remove and bury trees by landslides and debris flows [2], a consequence more evident in mountainous areas [3]. Unlike other agents of disturbance such as wind [4], drought [5] and pest [6] that leave dead trees aboveground, earthquakes represent a form of damage to forests that usually results in the burial of uprooted trees. Earthquakes are a severe but generally overlooked form of disturbance to forest ecosystem.
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