Abstract

To quantify the potential nitrogen and carbon sink and understand its implication to the regional carbon budget and future forest management, the N and C pools of Olga Bay Larch (Larix olgensis Henry) in five age groups (7.5 to 46 years old) were investigated in North-Eastern China. Twenty-seven sample trees have been cut down by ages and roots of twelve were dug up. Tree components (bark, stem, living and dead branches, foliage, root), shrub and herb, forest floor (coarse woody debris, fine woody debris, snag, slash piles and litter) and mineral soil were sampled. There was a significant difference between the N (p = 0.000<0.05) and C (p = 0.000<0.05) concentrations of the tree components, while the difference between the N (p = 0.726>0.05) and C (P = 0.445>0.05) concentrations of the stand ages is not significant. Total biomass were 24775.92, 66673.83, 91653.6, 112023.6 and 204103.2 kg/ha in young, middle, near-mature, mature and over-mature stand, respectively. The N and C pools of Larix olgensis ecosystem in each age group were 49.05, 56.50, 72.67, 68.73, 102.50 tN/ha and 89.97, 113.84, 133.58, 152.61, 210.26 tC/ha, respectively. Both N and C density in the mineral soil decreased with the increasing soil depth and the soil layer is an important part of total ecosystem N and C pools in each age group.

Keywords:

Age-sequence, biomass, Larix olgensis, nitrogen and carbon pool,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

Open Access Policy

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.