Connection between carbon storage and diverse trees
The experts discovered that maintaining forest variety may improve the accumulation of these two compounds in the soil, assisting in maintain soil fertility and reducing climate change.
In general, increased tree diversity enhanced soil carbon storage by 30% to 32% and enhanced nitrogen storage by 42% to 50% on a decadal timescale.
Researchers have examined data from hundreds of plots of Canada’s National Forest Inventory(NFI) in a recent study that was published in the journal Nature.
Clarifying the connection between changes in carbon and nitrogen storage in soils from natural forests and tree diversification was the study’s main objective.
https://www.earth.com/news/tree-diversity-increases-carbon-storage-in-forest-soils/
When carbon is removed from atmospheric CO2 during photosynthesis, forest soils play a significant role in sequestering it because they store at least three times as much as carbon as live plants.
In addition, nitrogen is a crucial nutrient that promotes plant development and the uptake of carbon in forests. This is the first research to show evidence of a comparable result in natural forests, despite the fact that other biodiversity-manipulation studies have already demonstrated that more three diversity and nitrogen in forest soils.
Carbon & nitrogen in soil and climate change
The researchers examined samples of the mineral and organic soil horizons from 361 and 245 plots, respectively, that covered most of Canada’s landmass and contained a range of fir, maple, pine, spruce, hemlock, cedar, and other three species.
Then, by comparing information from two NFI sample-plot censuses, one from 2000~ 2006 and another from 2008~ 2017, the experts calculated changes in soil carbon and nitrogen storage over time and evaluated the relationship between these changes and tree variety.
It was measured as a combination of tree richness(the number of tree species in a sample plot), species evenness(a gauge of the relative abundance of tree species), and functional diversity(the various functional characteristics of a tree species).
According to the analysis, increasing species evenness from its minimum to maximum value increased carbon and nitrogen storage in the organic soil layer by 30 and 42%, respectively, while increasing the functional diversity of trees to its maximum value increased carbon and nitrogen storage in the soil layer by 32 and 50%, respectively.
According to research main author Xinli Chen, a postdoctoral scholar in Forest Ecology at the University of Alberta in Canada, the study demonstrates for the first time the sustained benefits of tree diversity in storing soil carbon and nitrogen in natural forests.
Another co-author Peter Reich, the director of the Institute for Global Change Biology(IGCB) at the University of Michigan, a greater diversity of species translates into a mixture of different types of trees with different ways of acquiring and storing biomass.
Both in live trunks, roots, branches, and leaves as well as in recently dead and decaying plant detritus on and in the soil.
These findings highlight the significance of biodiversity conservation in forests and provide guidance for efforts to use forests for carbon and nitrogen sequestration by indicating that promoting tree diversity can not only increase productivity but also help mitigate climate change and reduce soil degradation.
Source: Sciencedaily
