Exploring causal relationship between landforms and ground level CO2 in Dalseong forestry carbon project site of South Korea

Abstract

The co-relationship between landforms and CO2 concentration in forestry carbon project sites remains largely unexplored. This paper examined the casual-relationship between landforms and ground level, `ambient’ carbon dioxide (total 34 points acquired on August 2016). This study employed geographically weighted regression to examine the spatially varying relationships between carbon dioxide, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) patterns and changing trends of landform (elevation, slope) and solar intensity (insolation and duration of sunshine) in Dalseong forestry carbon project site of South Korea. The result reveals that landforms were closely associated with ground CO2 data (R2 = 0.952–0.982) and NDVI. Results from these experiments suggest that the ambient CO2 concentration varies significantly in according to landform and solar intensity forming local vegetation habitat at in situ survey point. It is anticipated that this research outcome could be used as a valuable reference for quality assurance of portable carbon monitoring in relation to landforms in forestry carbon project sites.