RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Carbon accumulation over 70 years of old-field succession driven by live biomass in a Mediterranean continental environment
A1 Velázquez Martín, Eduardo
A1 Turrión Nieves, María Belén
A1 Bravo Oviedo, Felipe
K1 Biomasa
K1 Gestión forestal
K1 Agricultura
K1 Agricultural land abandonment
K1 New forests
K1 Biomass
K1 Abandono de tierras agrícolas
K1 Bosques nuevos
K1 Biomasa
K1 31 Ciencias Agrarias
K1 3106 Ciencia Forestal
AB Forest expansion in abandoned agricultural lands entails the fixation of atmospheric CO2 in the live biomass, the soil as well as in other ecosystem compartments, and in turn, has strong implications for C budgets and the design of actions to mitigate climate change all over the world. However, changes in C stocks in these compartments are still poorly understood. We assessed the main patterns and drivers of C accumulation over spontaneous colonization of abandoned agricultural lands, considering the above- and below-ground biomass (AGB and BGB, respectively), the woody debris (WD), the litter and the surface soil (SS; 0–6 cm depth), in an area of Central-North Spain. To attain this objective, we established a chronosequence of 30 plots (0.0625 ha) located in agricultural lands abandoned in 1956–1977, 1977–2005 and 2005–2017, in four different forest types. We found that the AGB and the SS accounted for the major proportion of the total C stock, but the BGB was also relatively important. Carbon stocks in all these major compartments increased linearly with the age of tree colonization. But C in the SS did not significantly differ among plots abandoned in the three periods considered and showed decreasing rates of change from youngest (i.e. those in plots abandoned in 2005–2017) to oldest (i.e. those in plots abandoned in 1956–1977) stands. Carbon accumulation was mainly driven by adult stem density and age of tree colonization in the AGB and the BGB, and by the total nitrogen content in the SS. Our findings indicate that, in these new forests, C accumulation in the live biomass is still ongoing and proceeds relatively fast and at an increasing rate, which points toward a clear potential for atmospheric CO2 fixation over the next few decades. This process, however, proceeds more slowly and shows signals of an apparent deceleration in the SS. The C stock in the surface soil is, in fact, largely disconnected from that of live biomass and varies depending on pre-abandonment land-use differences among the study sites.
PB Elsevier
SN 0378-1127
YR 2023
FD 2023
LK https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/61611
UL https://uvadoc.uva.es/handle/10324/61611
LA eng
NO Forest Ecology and Management, 2023, vol. 548, 121422
NO Producción Científica
DS UVaDOC
RD 23-dic-2024