Carbon dynamics of temperate grassland ecosystems in China from 1951 to 2007: an analysis with a process-based biogeochemistry model

Abstract

Grasslands account for 40 % of the Chinese land area. About 80 % of the total grasslands are in the northern temperate zone. These grassland ecosystems provide goods and services to the local people and play an important role in the global carbon cycle. Remote sensing and ecosystem modeling approaches have been used to quantify the carbon budget of these grasslands. However, the intensive site measurements and meteorological data acquired in these ecosystems in the last few decades have not been adequately used to improve ecosystem model capabilities, in turn, better quantify their carbon budget. In this study an effort was made to examine the carbon budget and its spatial–temporal variation of the temperate grasslands in China from 1951 to 2007 using a process-based biogeochemistry model. It was found that the regional grasslands acted as a small carbon sink at 11.25 g C m−2 year−1 in the study area of 64.96 million hectares with a high inter-annual variability ranging from −124 to 122.7 g C m−2 year−1 during the study period. As a result, the temperate grasslands sequestered about 410 Tg C in their vegetation and soils during the study period. The carbon sink occurred in typical steppe in central Inner Mongolia within the 300–400 mm rainfall zone and forest steppe in central and western China. By contrast, forest steppe in northeastern China mainly acted as a carbon source. Three major ecosystem types of forest steppe, typical steppe and desert steppe account for 54, 34, and 12 % of the total sink (7.3 Tg C year−1) during 1951–2007, respectively. Soil moisture and evapotranspiration had a dominant effect on carbon budget in the typical steppe and the forest steppe while both water conditions and nitrogen mineralization rate were the major factors in the desert steppe. At a decadal scale, the air temperature significantly increased by 0.4 °C and annual precipitation insignificantly decreased by 0.2 mm; the regional carbon sink increased by 2.2 Tg C per decade during the period 1951–2007. However, further sensitivity analysis suggests that the sink of temperate grasslands will be reduced if the climate gets warmer and drier during this century since the increasing net primary production does not keep up with the increase of heterotrophic respiration.