Preliminary Estimation of Soil Carbon Sequestration of China's Forests during 1999–2008

Abstract

The National Forest Inventory (NFI) is an important resource for estimating the national carbon balance (These data were unpublished data, and we could only obtain the data before 2008 through data search by now). Based on the data from sample plots, the literature, and NFI, as well as the relationships between volume, biomass, annual litterfall and soil respiration of different forest types, the net ecosystem production (NEP), changes in forest biomass carbon storage (ΔCbiomass) and non-respiratory losses (NR) of China's forests during 1999–2008 were estimated, and the forest soil carbon sequestration (ΔCsoil) was assessed according to the carbon balance principle of the forest ecosystem (ΔCsoil = NEP – NR – ΔCbiomass). The results showed that the total NEP, ΔCbiomass, NR and ΔCsoil values for China's forests were 157.530, 48.704, 31.033 and 77.793 Tg C yr–1 respectively, and average NEP, ΔCbiomass, NR, and ΔCsoil values were 101.247, 31.303, 19.945 and 49.999 g C m–2 yr–1 respectively. There were large spatial differences in forest soil carbon sequestration in different parts of China. The forest soil in Jiangxi, Hunan, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Guangxi and Liaoning served as carbon sources and the carbon released was about 25.507 Tg C yr–1. The other 22 provinces served as carbon sinks and the average carbon sequestration by forest soil came to 103.300 Tg C yr–1. This research established a method for evaluating soil carbon sequestration by China's forests based on the NFI, which is a useful supplement to current statistical data-based studies on the forest ecosystem carbon cycle, and can promote comparable studies on forest soil carbon sequestration with consistent research methods at the regional scale.