Carbon sequestration of black locust forests in the Yellow River Delta region, China

Abstract

The Yellow River Delta region in China is a land area of 1,200,000 ha with rich natural resources. Adverse environmental conditions, such as low rainfall and high salinity, promote the dominance of black locust trees for afforestation. With the increase of CO 2 in the atmosphere, this forest and others throughout the world have become valued for their ability to sequester and store carbon. Forests store carbon in aboveground biomass (i.e. trees), belowground biomass (i.e. roots), soils and standing litter crop (i.e. forest floor and coarse woody debris). There are well-developed methods to sample forest ecosystems, including tree inventories that are used to quantify carbon in aboveground tree biomass. Such inventories are used to estimate the types of roundwood products removed from the forest during harvesting. Based on standard plot inventories and stem analyses, carbon sequestration estimates of trees were 222.41 t ha −1 for the Yellow River Delta region accounted for 67.12% of the whole forest. Similarly, carbon storage by herbaceous matter and soil was 0.50 and 50.34 t ha −1 , respectively. The results suggest that carbon sequestration in the forest ecosystem was performed by most of the forest, which plays an increasingly important role in sequestering carbon as the stand grows.

Spatiotemporal Distribution Characteristics of Soil Organic Carbon in Newborn Coastal Wetlands of the Yellow River Delta Estuary

“…It is the first time to estimate the vegetation carbon storage in YRD using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) data in 2002 [27]. Zhang et al estimated that the carbon sequestration of trees were 222.41 t ha À1 and carbon storage by herbaceous matter and soil was 0.50 and 50.34 t ha À1 for the YRD region [28]. Unfortunately, only several field results about the nutriment elements biogeochemical cycles in this area have been reported so far [25,27,29,30].…”

Litter Inhibitory Effects on Soil Microbial Biomass, Activity, and Catabolic Diversity in Two Paired Stands of Robinia pseudoacacia L. and Pinus nigra Arn.

“…The dinitrogen-fixing tree black locust, native to North America, has been used for afforestation worldwide (despite the impact on floristic diversity of this invasive tree) due to its ability to grow in extreme site conditions, as on new volcanic substrate or on degraded soil. According to a study performed in the Yellow River Delta region, C sequestration in the soil of black locust forests, 20 years after afforestation, accounted for 32.56% of the carbon in the ecosystem (154.61 t ha −1 ) and was increasingly more important with increasing stand age [55]. The results of our research suggest further investigations in the potential of C sequestration in the soil under black locust to better understand the mechanisms behind and to improve afforestation policies for mitigation of climatic changes.…”

Forest biomass resources and utilization in China

“…As earlier discussed, land degradation is a serious issue in China, likewise other Asian countries as well. China is increasingly suffering from salinization throughout its arid regions as new irrigation oases are being developed and affects more than a fifth of land in China, particularly in Ningxia and Hetao irrigated plains along the Yellow River (Zhang et al, 2010a(Zhang et al, , 2011. Waterlogging and salinization affect between 2 and 3 million ha in India and Pakistan respectively.…”

“…biomass generating capacity is expected to reach 300 million kilowatts and 1600 million kilowatts by 2020 (Research Group of Chinese Forest Bioenergy, 2006). Many areas have good conditions for developing biomass energy production (Ren, 2007;Zhang et al, 2010a). Of these materials forest biomass production plays an important role on bioenergy development in the country.…”