Bamboo is widely distributed in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As a major non-wood forest product and wood substitute, bamboo is of increasing interest to ecologists owing to its rapid growth and correspondingly high potential for mitigating climate change. With a long history of production and utilization of bamboo, China is one of the countries with the richest bamboo resources and largest area of bamboo forest, and has paid unprecedented attention in recent decades to management of its bamboo forests. This review summarizes the versatility of bamboo in terms of its ecological benefits including carbon sequestration, water and soil conservation, its benefits for socioeconomic development, and its potential to mitigate climate change. Current problems, and the future potential of and challenges to rapidly expanding bamboo forests under both wider use of intensive management and the effects of global warming, are also discussed.
Climate change and its potential effects on ecosystems justify the need to implement forest management strategies that increase carbon (C) sequestration. A process-based model, TRIPLEX-Management, was used to investigate how to increase C sequestration within managed jack pine (Pinus banksiana Lamb.) forests. The simulations included a constant climate scenario and two climate change scenarios generated from the Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM 3.1). A total of 36 forest management scenarios (a control where no forest management occurred, five varied rotation length harvesting-only regimes, and combinations of six thinning regimes and five rotation lengths) were simulated under each climate scenario for nine sites characterized by stocking levels from 0.3 to 0.7. A significant increase in C sequestration was generated under the climate change scenarios compared with those under constant climate. Mean annual net ecosystem productivity (NEP) varied with rotation length, but was not changed by precommercial thinning. Future studies should consider life cycle analysis of harvested wood products as in this study they were assumed to be a permanent C sink. Climate warming might enhance limited positive effects of forest thinning on C sequestration. Shortening rotation length from 70-80 years to 50 years might enhance NEP, increase wood production, and decrease the risk of climate change impacts on jack pine forests.
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