Modelling the impacts of intensifying forest management on carbon budget across a long latitudinal gradient in Europe

nonPeerReviewe

Visible, very near and short wave IR hyperspectral drone imaging system for agriculture and natural water applications

Frontiers in Spectral imaging and 3D Technologies for Geospatial Solutions, 25–27 October 2017, Jyväskylä, Finland201

The role of geodiversity in providing ecosystem services at broad scales

Abstract Mapping of ecosystem services (ESs) provide valuable information on the geographical variation of ESs and their relation to overall diversity. Although the relationship between biodiversity and ESs has been intensively explored, little is known how geodiversity (i.e., variety of geological, geomorphological and soil features) is associated with different ESs. We studied 1) the spatial variation of geodiversity and biodiversity in relation to six ESs (i.e., forest carbon budget, potential supply of groundwater, milk and meat production, crop production, amount of free-time residences and nationally valuable landscapes) using variation partitioning (VP), and 2) the spatial overlap between geodiversity and biodiversity and ESs using generalized additive models (GAM) in 1006 intensively surveyed grid cells of 100 km² located across Finland. In the VP, biodiversity independently explained more of the variation than geodiversity for majority of the ESs. However, shared explanation ability of biodiversity and geodiversity was considerable for majority of ESs (forest carbon budget: 41.3%, crop production: 15.0%, free-time residences: 15.2% and valuable landscapes: 7.3%), often exceeding that of both independent contributions. GAMs indicated that increase in both biodiversity and geodiversity enhances forest carbon budget (D2 = 66.8% and 12.4%, respectively), potential production of groundwater (8.3% and 0.1%), crop production (35.7% and 8.9%), free-time residences (40.0% and 7.9%) and valuable landscapes (11.6% and 6.9%). However, the positive relationship between diversity and ESs levelled off for many of the ESs. Our findings suggest that geodiversity is an important complementing factor in explaining spatial variation of the ESs in high-latitude regions. We also found dominantly synergic effects between abiotic diversity and ESs. Thus, our study results highlight the need to more deeply incorporate abiotic diversity into ESs research. Environmental conservation and management would benefit from the more comprehensive integration of geodiversity to ESs research along with the changing environmental conditions of future decades

Soil organic carbon dynamics of black locust plantations in the middle Loess Plateau area of China

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the largest terrestrial carbon pool and sensitive to land use and cover change; its dynamics are critical for carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. In this study, we combined a modeling approach and field measurements to examine the temporal dynamics of SOC following afforestation (<i>Robinia pseudoacacia</i>) of former arable land at six sites under different climatic conditions in the Loess Plateau during 1980–2010, where the annual mean precipitation ranging from 450 mm to 600 mm. The results showed that the measured mean SOC increased to levels higher than before afforestation when taking the last measurements (i.e., at age 25 to 30 yr) at all the sites, although it decreased at the wetter sites in the first few years. The accumulation rates of SOC were 1.58 to 6.22% yr⁻¹ in the upper 20 cm and 1.62 to 5.15% yr⁻¹in the upper 40 cm of soil. The simulations reproduced the basic characteristics of measured SOC dynamics, suggesting that litter input and climatic factors (temperature and precipitation) were the major causes for SOC dynamics and the differences among the sites. They explained 88–96, 48–86 and 57–74% of the variations in annual SOC changes at the soil depths of 0–20, 0–40, and 0–100 cm, respectively. Notably, the simulated SOC decreased during the first few years at all the sites, although the magnitudes of decreases were smaller at the drier sites. This suggested that the modeling may be advantageous in capturing SOC changes at finer timescale. The discrepancy between the simulation and measurement was a result of uncertainties in model structure, data input, and sampling design. Our findings indicated that afforestation promoted soil carbon sequestration at the study sites during 1980–2010. Afforestation activities should decrease soil disturbances to reduce carbon release in the early stage. The long-term strategy for carbon fixation capability of the plantations should also consider the climate and site conditions, species adaptability, and successional stage of recovery