Grau-Andrés, Roger and Wardle, David and Gundale, Michael and Foster, Claire N. and Kardol, Paul
(2020).
Effects of plant functional group removal on CO(2)fluxes and belowground C stocks across contrasting ecosystems.
Ecology. 101
, e03170
[Research article]
![]() |
PDF
3MB |
Abstract
Changes in plant communities can have large effects on ecosystem carbon (C) dynamics and long-term C stocks. However, how these effects are mediated by environmental context or vary among ecosystems is not well understood. To study this, we used a long-term plant removal experiment set up across 30 forested lake islands in northern Sweden that collectively represent a strong gradient of soil fertility and ecosystem productivity. We measured forest floor CO(2)exchange and aboveground and belowground C stocks for a 22-yr experiment involving factorial removal of the two dominant functional groups of the boreal forest understory, namely ericaceous dwarf shrubs and feather mosses, on each of the 30 islands. We found that long-term shrub and moss removal increased forest floor net CO(2)loss and decreased belowground C stocks consistently across the islands irrespective of their productivity or soil fertility. However, we did see context-dependent responses of respiration to shrub removals because removals only increased respiration on islands of intermediate productivity. Both CO(2)exchange and C stocks responded more strongly to shrub removal than to moss removal. Shrub removal reduced gross primary productivity of the forest floor consistently across the island gradient, but it had no effect on respiration, which suggests that loss of belowground C caused by the removals was driven by reduced litter inputs. Across the island gradient, shrub removal consistently depleted C stocks in the soil organic horizon by 0.8 kg C/m(2). Our results show that the effect of plant functional group diversity on C dynamics can be relatively consistent across contrasting ecosystems that vary greatly in productivity and soil fertility. These findings underline the key role of understory vegetation in forest C cycling, and suggest that global change leading to changes in the relative abundance of both shrubs and mosses could impact on the capacity of boreal forests to store C.
Authors/Creators: | Grau-Andrés, Roger and Wardle, David and Gundale, Michael and Foster, Claire N. and Kardol, Paul | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Title: | Effects of plant functional group removal on CO(2)fluxes and belowground C stocks across contrasting ecosystems | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Ecology | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2020 | ||||||
Volume: | 101 | ||||||
Article number: | e03170 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 12 | ||||||
Publisher: | WILEY | ||||||
ISSN: | 0012-9658 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 1 Natural sciences > 106 Biological Sciences (Medical to be 3 and Agricultural to be 4) > Ecology | ||||||
Keywords: | biodiversity, boreal forest, context-dependency, moss, net ecosystem exchange, plant-soil interaction, primary productivity, respiration, shrub, soil carbon, soil microclimate, understory | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-108247 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-108247 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
| ||||||
ID Code: | 19820 | ||||||
Faculty: | S - Faculty of Forest Sciences | ||||||
Department: | (S) > Dept. of Forest Ecology and Management | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 30 Dec 2020 05:23 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 15 Jan 2021 19:21 |
Repository Staff Only: item control page