Abstract
Tropospheric ozone impacts the health and productivity of forest ecosystems. The concentration of ozone on Earth will increase in the future, particularly in China and its neighboring countries, including Korea, due to a projected rise in nitrogen dioxide and ozone precursors as a result of China’s emissions. This study aims to estimate the effect of changes in ozone concentration and climate change on the forests in Korea, based on expected nitrogen dioxide emissions in Korea and China in the future. To do this, we developed an empirical model that represents the statistical relationship between the net primary productivity (NPP) of the forests and ozone concentration using historical data; and, estimated the future NPP of the forests under future ozone concentration scenarios based on nitrogen dioxide emissions of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. The analysis suggests that the ozone concentration begin exerting effects to the NPP, about 68.10 tC/km2/year decrement per 0.01 ppm increment. We estimated that the NPP of Korean forests has been reduced by 8.25% due to the current concentration of ozone, and the damage is estimated to increase to a range between 8.47% and 10.55% in the 2050s, and between 5.85% and 11.15% in the 2090s depending on the scenarios.
Highlights
Forests offer a wide variety of ecosystem services, such as provisioning services, support services, cultural services, and regulation services [1,2,3]
The Carnegie Ames Stanford Approach (CASA)-net primary productivity (NPP) values used in the model were developed using the 10-year average of 592.53 tC/km2 /year (SD: 213.72 tC/km2 /year); over the last decade the ozone concentration in the forest areas in the second and third quarters had a mean of 0.0867 ppm (SD 0.0395 ppm)
This study investigated the relationship between ozone concentration in the second and third quarters and the net primary productivity of forest and estimated the damage that is caused by ozone when the ozone concentration was fixed and when it changed
Summary
Forests offer a wide variety of ecosystem services, such as provisioning services, support services, cultural services, and regulation services [1,2,3]. Forest plants absorb and store carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, thereby mitigating the greenhouse gas effects on the earth’s climate and affecting temperature and humidity on local and global scales [1,4]. Ozone, nitrogen, and sulfur have been reported to become increasing threats to forest ecosystems [7,8,9,10]. Sulfur oxide and ozone are typical air pollutants that are affecting plant growth [8,9,10]. In the case of sulfur oxide, its concentration is gradually decreasing due to various environmental regulations and it is assumed that the concentration will continue to decrease into the future [7]
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