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Patterns of carbon (C) allocation across different stages of stand development in Eucalyptus urophylla × E. grandis plantations are not well understood. In this study, we examined biomass and mineral soil C content in five development stages (1, 2, 3, 4-5, and 6-8 years old) of a Eucalyptus stand in southern China. The tree biomass C pool increased with stand age and showed a high annual rate of accumulation. Stems accounted for the highest proportion of biomass C sequestered. The C pool in mineral soil increased initially after afforestation and then declined gradually, with C density decreasing with soil depth. The upper 50 cm of soil contained the majority (57%-68%) of sequestered C. The other biomass components (shrubs, herbaceous plants, litter, and fine roots) accounted for <5% of the total ecosystem C pool. Total C pools in the Eucalyptus plantation ecosystem were 112.9, 172.5, 203.8, 161.1, in the five developmental stages, respectively, with most of the C sequestered below ground. We conclude that Eucalyptus plantations have considerable biomass C sequestration potential during stand development. OPEN ACCESSForests 2015, 6 1764

Understanding the spatial distribution of tree species in subtropical evergreen-deciduous broadleaf karst forest is fundamental to studying species coexistence and karst species diversity. Here, complete spatial randomness and heterogeneous Poisson process models were used to analyze the spatial distribution patterns of 146 species with at least one individual per ha in a 25-ha plot in southwest China. We used canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) and the torus-translation test (TTT) to explain the distributions of observed species. Our results show that an aggregated distribution was the dominant pattern in Mulun karst forests; the percentage and intensity of aggregated decreased with increasing spatial scale, abundance, mean diameter at breast height (DBH), and maximum DBH. Rare species were more aggregated than intermediately abundant and abundant species. However, functional traits (e.g., growth form and phenological guild) had no significant effects on the distributions of species. The CCA revealed that the four analyzed topographic variables (elevation, slope, aspect, and convexity) had significant influences on species distributions. The TTT showed that not all species have habitat preferences and that 68.5% (100 out of 146 species) show a strongly positive or negative association with at least one habitat. Most species were inclined to grow on slopes and hilltops.