Effects of climate change, fire and harvest on carbon storage of boreal forests in the Great Xing'an Mountains, China.

Abstract

Climate change will increase the frequency of fire disturbances, which may further exa-cerbate carbon loss from boreal forests in the Great Xing'an Mountains, China. In this study, we coupled forest ecosystem and forest landscape models to simulate the dynamics of boreal forest carbon storage in the next 100 years. We quantified the effects of climate change, fire and harvest on carbon storage of boreal forests. The results showed that climate change would increase carbon storage of boreal forests in the Great Xing'an Mountains, even if fire and harvest could partially offset such changes. Aboveground and soil organic carbon storage would increase by 9%-22% and 6%-9% in the next 100 years. In the short-term (0-20 years), the effects of climate change on carbon storage was stronger than fire. The effects of climate change on boreal forest carbon storage were less than fire and harvest in medium (30-50 years) and long-term (60-100 years). The variability of climate change and fire disturbance in the Great Xing'an Mountains caused high uncertainty of the future boreal forest carbon storage. The uncertainties of aboveground and soil organic carbon of boreal forests in the Great Xing'an Mountains were 12.4%-16.2% and 6.6%-10.4% in the next 100 years. The effects of seed dispersal, fire and harvest should be taken account for accurate estimation of carbon storage in Chinese boreal forests.