TY - JOUR
T1 - Limits to growth of forest biomass carbon sink under climate change
AU - Zhu, Kai
AU - Zhang, Jian
AU - Niu, Shuli
AU - Chu, Chengjin
AU - Luo, Yiqi
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank the hundreds of field crew members who collected the data; Christopher Woodall and Brian Walters for assistance in accessing the United States forest inventory data; Shongming Huang, Wenli Xu, Phil Loseth, Shawn Meng, Greg Behuniak, and Scott Nielsen for assistance in accessing the Canadian forest inventory data. We thank Elliott Campbell, Fangliang He, Michael Loik, Tom E.X. Miller, Christopher Woodall, and anonymous referees for comments on the analysis. This study was supported by a Julian Huxley Faculty Fellowship from Rice University and a Faculty Research Grant awarded by the Committee on Research from the University of California, Santa Cruz (K.Z.), the Thousand Young Talents Program in China (J.Z.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China Grants 31670439 (J.Z.), 31625006 (S.N.), and 31622014, 31570426 (C.C.).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Author(s).
PY - 2018/12/1
Y1 - 2018/12/1
N2 - Widely recognized as a significant carbon sink, North American forests have experienced a history of recovery and are facing an uncertain future. This growing carbon sink is dictated by recovery from land-use change, with growth trajectory modified by environmental change. To address both processes, we compiled a forest inventory dataset from North America to quantify aboveground biomass growth with stand age across forest types and climate gradients. Here we show, the biomass grows from 90 Mg ha-1 (2000-2016) to 105 Mg ha-1 (2020 s), 128 Mg ha-1 (2050 s), and 146 Mg ha-1 (2080 s) under climate change scenarios with no further disturbances. Climate change modifies the forest recovery trajectory to some extent, but the overall growth is limited, showing signs of biomass saturation. The future (2080s) biomass will only sequester at most 22% more carbon than the current level. Given such a strong sink has limited growth potential, our ground-based analysis suggests policy changes to sustain the carbon sink.
AB - Widely recognized as a significant carbon sink, North American forests have experienced a history of recovery and are facing an uncertain future. This growing carbon sink is dictated by recovery from land-use change, with growth trajectory modified by environmental change. To address both processes, we compiled a forest inventory dataset from North America to quantify aboveground biomass growth with stand age across forest types and climate gradients. Here we show, the biomass grows from 90 Mg ha-1 (2000-2016) to 105 Mg ha-1 (2020 s), 128 Mg ha-1 (2050 s), and 146 Mg ha-1 (2080 s) under climate change scenarios with no further disturbances. Climate change modifies the forest recovery trajectory to some extent, but the overall growth is limited, showing signs of biomass saturation. The future (2080s) biomass will only sequester at most 22% more carbon than the current level. Given such a strong sink has limited growth potential, our ground-based analysis suggests policy changes to sustain the carbon sink.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-018-05132-5
DO - 10.1038/s41467-018-05132-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 30006620
AN - SCOPUS:85049980816
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 9
JO - Nature Communications
JF - Nature Communications
IS - 1
M1 - 2709
ER -