Temporal evolution of the European forest sector carbon sink from 1950 to 1999

Abstract

Estimates of the role of the European terrestrial biosphere in the global carbon cycle still vary by a factor 10. This is due to differences in methods and assumptions employed, but also due to difference in reference periods of the studies. The magnitude of the sink varies between years because of inter‐annual variation of short‐term climate, but also due to long‐term trends in development of the vegetation and its management. For this purpose, we present the results of an application of a carbon bookkeeping model to the forest sector of the European forests from 1950 to 1999. The analysis includes the compartments trees, soils, and wood products. The model uses statistics on European (30 countries excl. CIS) stemwood volume increment, forest area change, fellings, wood products and their international trade, and natural disturbances, supplemented with conversion coefficients, soil parameters and information on management. An (almost uninterrupted) increasing sink (Net Biome Production) in the European forest sector was found, increasing from 0.03 Pg C year−1 in the 1950s to 0.14 Pg C year−1 in the 1990s (for resp. 132 million hectares and 140 million hectares of forest). The sink in the tree and the soil compartment were approximately of the same size until 1970. After the 1970s the size of the sink in the tree biomass increases quickly, causing the tree biomass to account for some two thirds of the total sink in the 1990s. The results as presented here have to be regarded with caution especially with regard to the early decades of the analysis and with regard to the soil compartment.

Carbon accumulation in Finland's forests 1922–2004 – an estimate obtained by combination of forest inventory data with modelling of biomass, litter and soil

“…Similar trends toward increase in forest carbon stocks have been observed everywhere across the temperate and boreal zones during recent decades [9,34]. The reasons behind these trends are still not entirely clear but are known to differ among regions [3,25,34,56,58].…”

“…This suggests that studies ignoring ground vegetation (e.g. [25,56]) may result in underestimation not only of these parameters but also the soil carbon stock and sink that are dependent on total litter production.…”

“…Ignoring this carbon, after defining carbon sink as a process that removes carbon from the atmosphere [18], decreases the total carbon sink of these forests to 331 Tg and the contribution of the litter and soil to 17%. This is somewhat less than in the forests of Western Europe (32%) in 1990 according to Liski et al [37] or in Europe's forests (32-56% depending on the year) according to Nabuurs et al [56]. Nevertheless, all these model-calculated estimates suggest that soil has been a sink for atmospheric carbon in Europe's forests during recent decades but that this sink has been smaller than the biomass sink.…”

Methods for biomass stock estimation in Mediterranean maquis systems

“…The "Good Practice Guidance for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry" (GPG-LULUCF - Penman et al 2003) is the official guide developed by the IPCC National Greenhouse Gas Inventories Programme to estimate the carbon stock and its changes in relation to the KP (Nabuurs et al 2003, Schlamadinger et al 2003. It defines five terrestrial carbon pools: above-and belowground biomass, dead wood, litter, and soil organic matter.…”

The effect of climate on the net primary productivity (NPP) of Pinus koraiensis in the Changbai Mountains over the past 50 years

“…Over the past five decades, a significant warming of the global land surface (Hartmann et al 2013) has resulted in a remarkable increase in the NPP of global ecosystems Nemani et al 2003), especially savannas and temperate forests (Gang et al 2013). Until recently, most evidence has shown an increase in the growth of temperate forests (Fang et al 2005;Hasenauer et al 1999;Nabuurs et al 2003). A few cases have not shown any trends or have shown a decrease in productivity with extreme growth limitations (Lawrence et al 2005;Lucht et al 2002).…”