Stock of standing dead trees in boreal forests of Central Siberia

L V Mukhortova,D S Sobachkin,D G Schepaschenko,L V Krivobokov,A A Knorre

doi:10.1088/1755-1315/875/1/012059

Abstract

A significant part of carbon assimilated by forest is deposited in tree trunks. Growth and development of tree stands is accompanied by accumulation of standing dead trees (snags) due to natural tree mortality and as a result of the impact of exogenous factors. Carbon accumulated in these dead trunks is excluded from the fast turnover due to low rate of wood decomposition, so that snags can be considered as a pool of organic carbon with a slow rate of its return to the atmosphere. We estimated stock of snags on 54 sample plots, which represent the main types of forest ecosystems in the northern and middle taiga of Central Siberia. In the middle taiga, stock of snags varied from up to 7 m3 ha-1 in Siberian spruce forests to 20-42 m3 ha-1 in Scots pine forests. Larch forests in the northern taiga had the similar stock of snags as larch forests in the middle taiga despite significantly higher growing stock in the later. Snags contributed from 4 to 19% to the total stock of woody biomass in studied forests. This study indicated the significance of snags and can be used to estimate carbon budget of forest ecosystems of the region.

Highlights

The interest in the study of coarse woody debris (CWD) and their role in ecosystems has significantly increased over the last 15-20 years: the number of the scientific publications on CWD has increased from 20-50 publications per year in the 1990s to more than 200 publications per year in the last decade [1]
Stock volume of the standing dead trees in different types of forest ecosystems Stock volume of snags on the studied sample plots in the middle taiga varied in forests of different tree species from 0.04 to 42.0 m3 ha-1
We estimated the stock of snags for the main types of forest ecosystems in the northern and middle taiga of Central Siberia

Summary

Introduction

The interest in the study of coarse woody debris (CWD) and their role in ecosystems has significantly increased over the last 15-20 years: the number of the scientific publications on CWD has increased from 20-50 publications per year in the 1990s to more than 200 publications per year in the last decade [1]. Questions related to accumulation and wood transformation of standing dead trees (snags) are less studied that cause significant uncertainty in estimations of global carbon balance and models of its relation to the climate [2]. The main emphasis in the studies of snags was placed on the importance of this component as a habitat for nesting and feeding of a large number of species of wild fauna [3,4,5,6], or as a stock of combustible material for forest fires [7,8] followed by development of recommendations for the management of this component of ecosystems [9,10]. Data on stock of snags in northern regions of Siberia are especially scarce

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