PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 5: Climate Dynamics
Tuesday, August 9, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Carbon flux and storage in a highly productive managed oak savanna.
Tenney, Gwendolyn*,1, Deforest, Jared*,1, Noormets, Asko 1, Chen, Jiquan *,1, McNulty, Steve2, Sun, Ge2, 1 University of Toledo, Toledo, OH2 North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
ABSTRACT- Human activity has increased C concentration in the atmosphere by 25% in the last 150 years. Temperate forests in North America can store C and potentially offset anthropogenic C sources. Because most forested ecosystems are managed, determining the capacity of these ecosystems to assimilate and store C is especially important. We quantified landscape carbon pools and fluxes in a managed Northwest Ohio oak savanna in order to determine the capacity for this ecosystem to store carbon. We determined carbon pools from aboveground biomass, fine roots, forest floor, and soil. Carbon fluxes were determined using eddy-covariance methods. Aboveground biomass was approximately 135 Mg C ha-1 and fine roots was 8 Mg C ha-1, forest floor carbon was 17 Mg C ha-1 and soil carbon was 56 Mg C ha-1. Annual net ecosystem productivity (NEP) was 8 Mg C ha-1 yr-1. Partitioning NEP into its components, 48% went into leaf litter production, whereas the remaining 52% went into root, stem, and branch production. Results indicate that the C storage in this mature oak savanna increased annually by 3.7%. While geographically oak savanna is rare in Ohio, the potential for this ecosystem to store C is high.
Key words: carbon, net ecosystem productivity, oak savanna, eddy-flux