TY - JOUR
T1 - Recovery time and state change of terrestrial carbon cycle after disturbance
AU - Fu, Zheng
AU - Li, Dejun
AU - Hararuk, Oleksandra
AU - Schwalm, Christopher
AU - Luo, Yiqi
AU - Yan, Liming
AU - Niu, Shuli
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Esther Ali and Xuecheng Chen for their help in collecting the data. This study was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31420103917, 31625006), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2013CB956300), the CAS STS project (KFJ-SW-STS-169) and the ‘Thousand Youth Talents Plan’.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2017/10/3
Y1 - 2017/10/3
N2 - Ecosystems usually recover from disturbance until a stable state, during which carbon (C) is accumulated to compensate for the C loss associated with disturbance events. However, it is not well understood how likely it is for an ecosystem to recover to an alternative state and how long it takes to recover toward a stable state. Here, we synthesized the results from 77 peer-reviewed case studies that examined ecosystem recovery following disturbances to quantify state change (relative changes between pre-disturbance and fully recovered states) and recovery times for various C cycle variables and disturbance types. We found that most ecosystem C pools and fluxes fully recovered to a stable state that was not significantly different from the pre-disturbance state, except for leaf area index and net primary productivity, which were 10% and 35% higher than the pre-disturbance value, respectively, in forest ecosystem. Recovery times varied largely among variables and disturbance types in the forest, with the longest recovery time required for total biomass (104 ± 33 years) and the shortest time required for C fluxes (23 ± 5 years). The longest and shortest recovery times for different disturbance types are deforestation (101 ± 28 years) and drought (10 ± 1 years), respectively. The recovery time was related to disturbance severity with severer disturbances requiring longer recovery times. However, in the long term, recovery had a strong tendency to drive ecosystem C accumulation towards an equilibrium state. Although we assumed disturbances are static, the recovery-related estimates and relationships revealed in this study are crucial for improving the estimates of disturbance impacts and long-term C balance in terrestrial ecosystems within a disturbance-recovery cycle.
AB - Ecosystems usually recover from disturbance until a stable state, during which carbon (C) is accumulated to compensate for the C loss associated with disturbance events. However, it is not well understood how likely it is for an ecosystem to recover to an alternative state and how long it takes to recover toward a stable state. Here, we synthesized the results from 77 peer-reviewed case studies that examined ecosystem recovery following disturbances to quantify state change (relative changes between pre-disturbance and fully recovered states) and recovery times for various C cycle variables and disturbance types. We found that most ecosystem C pools and fluxes fully recovered to a stable state that was not significantly different from the pre-disturbance state, except for leaf area index and net primary productivity, which were 10% and 35% higher than the pre-disturbance value, respectively, in forest ecosystem. Recovery times varied largely among variables and disturbance types in the forest, with the longest recovery time required for total biomass (104 ± 33 years) and the shortest time required for C fluxes (23 ± 5 years). The longest and shortest recovery times for different disturbance types are deforestation (101 ± 28 years) and drought (10 ± 1 years), respectively. The recovery time was related to disturbance severity with severer disturbances requiring longer recovery times. However, in the long term, recovery had a strong tendency to drive ecosystem C accumulation towards an equilibrium state. Although we assumed disturbances are static, the recovery-related estimates and relationships revealed in this study are crucial for improving the estimates of disturbance impacts and long-term C balance in terrestrial ecosystems within a disturbance-recovery cycle.
KW - carbon cycle
KW - equilibrium state
KW - global synthesis
KW - recovery time
KW - state change
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U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa8a5c
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/aa8a5c
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85033673893
SN - 1748-9318
VL - 12
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 10
M1 - 104004
ER -