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Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age

BACKGROUND: Understanding the relationship between the age of a forest stand and its biomass is essential for managing the forest component of the global carbon cycle. Since biomass increases with stand age, postponing harvesting to the age of biological maturity may result in the formation of a lar...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Alexandrov, Georgii A
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2007
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1865535/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17459169
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1750-0680-2-4
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author Alexandrov, Georgii A
author_facet Alexandrov, Georgii A
author_sort Alexandrov, Georgii A
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Understanding the relationship between the age of a forest stand and its biomass is essential for managing the forest component of the global carbon cycle. Since biomass increases with stand age, postponing harvesting to the age of biological maturity may result in the formation of a large carbon sink. This article quantifies the carbon sequestration capacity of forests by suggesting a default rule to link carbon stock and stand age. RESULTS: The age dependence of forest biomass is shown to be a power-law monomial where the power of age is theoretically estimated to be 4/5. This theoretical estimate is close to the known empirical estimate; therefore, it provides a scientific basis for a quick and transparent assessment of the benefits of postponing the harvest, suggesting that the annual magnitude of the sink induced by delayed harvest lies in the range of 1–2% of the baseline carbon stock. CONCLUSION: The results of this study imply that forest age could be used as an easily understood and scientifically sound measure of the progress in complying with national targets on the protection and enhancement of forest carbon sinks.
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spelling pubmed-18655352007-05-10 Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age Alexandrov, Georgii A Carbon Balance Manag Research BACKGROUND: Understanding the relationship between the age of a forest stand and its biomass is essential for managing the forest component of the global carbon cycle. Since biomass increases with stand age, postponing harvesting to the age of biological maturity may result in the formation of a large carbon sink. This article quantifies the carbon sequestration capacity of forests by suggesting a default rule to link carbon stock and stand age. RESULTS: The age dependence of forest biomass is shown to be a power-law monomial where the power of age is theoretically estimated to be 4/5. This theoretical estimate is close to the known empirical estimate; therefore, it provides a scientific basis for a quick and transparent assessment of the benefits of postponing the harvest, suggesting that the annual magnitude of the sink induced by delayed harvest lies in the range of 1–2% of the baseline carbon stock. CONCLUSION: The results of this study imply that forest age could be used as an easily understood and scientifically sound measure of the progress in complying with national targets on the protection and enhancement of forest carbon sinks. BioMed Central 2007-04-26 /pmc/articles/PMC1865535/ /pubmed/17459169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1750-0680-2-4 Text en Copyright © 2007 Alexandrov; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research
Alexandrov, Georgii A
Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age
title Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age
title_full Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age
title_fullStr Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age
title_full_unstemmed Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age
title_short Carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age
title_sort carbon stock growth in a forest stand: the power of age
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1865535/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17459169
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1750-0680-2-4
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