What is your estimate
of the total biomass (in tons) of carbon found on your hectare (including
course woody debris)?
In
today’s world, it’s hard to read the paper without seeing the words “Global
warming” or “Greenhouse gases” in the headlines. Most people think that the
carbon dioxide released when we breathe or conduct industrial processes goes
straight up into the atmosphere contributing to our global warming problem at
large. However, these people are not taking carbon sources or carbon sinks into
account. These sources and sinks are valuable ecological assets, because of
their ability to “harvest” the carbon in the air, and store it as part of the
living biomass in the ecosystem.
Forests
are a prime example of these carbon stores, because they consist of a great
collection of trees that use and store carbon as a part of their cellular
needs. However, the carbon is released back into the atmosphere as the trees
die. This is one of the main reasons why maintained (generally older) forests
are a highly valued natural resource for carbon sequestration.
In
our site at Niquette Bay State Park, we had a lot of carbon stores and sources
alike. The stores are the live trees that were generally situated in
characteristic stands among our site. These trees absorb the carbon that was
expelled and released by wildlife and through natural processes, and drive the
biological carbon sequestration process that runs forest ecosystem processes.
The carbon sinks are course woody debris (CWD’s), otherwise known as dead trees
that are releasing the carbon that they stored in their tissues up until the
time of death.
On
our site, we analyzed the three most characteristic tree stands for course
woody debris by walking straight line transects through the longest parts of
the stands. In the Oak/ Ostraya stand, we found a CWD volume of 1.77x 10-4
m3/ha. In the Red Pine Stand, we found a CWD volume of 2.13x
10-6 m3/ha. In the Maple stand, we discovered a CWD
volume of 1.54x 10-5 m3/ha. Generally speaking, there was
a decent amount of CWD that was characteristic to our plot. Therefore we
estimate that the estimate of total biomass of carbon found on our hectare was
at least 250 mg/ha, according to the forest inventory and analysis (FIA)
program (Tang, 2010).
Literature Cited:
Tang, Guoping, Brian Beckage, Benjamin Smith, and
Paul A. Miller. "Estimating Potential Forest NPP, Biomass and Their
Climatic Sensitivity in New England Using a Dynamic Ecosystem Model." Ecological
Society of America. Ecosphere, Dec. 2010. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/ES10-00087.1>.
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