Carbon accumulations by stock change approach in tropical highland forests of Chiapas, Mexico
- PDF / 1,823,520 Bytes
- 15 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 34 Downloads / 190 Views
ORIGINAL PAPER
Carbon accumulations by stock change approach in tropical highland forests of Chiapas, Mexico Deb R. Aryal1 • Roldan Ruiz-Corzo2
Received: 24 June 2018 / Accepted: 22 September 2018 Ó Northeast Forestry University 2019
Abstract Changes in forest biomass and soil organic carbon reserves have strong links to atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Human activities such as livestock grazing, forest fires, selective logging and firewood extraction are the common disturbances that affect the carbon dynamics of the forest ecosystems. Here, we hypothesized that such anthropogenic activities significantly reduce the carbon stocks and accumulation rates in the tropical highland forests of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas in Southern Mexico. We sampled the Pinus oocarpa Scheide dominated forests within the elevation range of 900 to 1100 m above sea level in 2010, 2014 and 2017. We measured the stand structural properties and used the reported allometric equations to calculate the tree carbon stocks. Stock change approach was used to calculate carbon accumulation rates. The results showed a gradual increase in carbon storage over the 7-year period from 2010 to 2017, but the rate of increase varied significantly
between the study sites. The aboveground carbon stock was 107.25 ± 11.77 Mg ha-1 for the site with lower anthropogenic intensity, compared to 74.29 ± 16.85 Mg ha-1 for the site with higher intensity. The current annual increment for the forest with lower anthropogenic intensity was 7.81 ± 0.65 Mg ha-1 a-1, compared to 3.87 ± 1.03 Mg ha-1 a-1 in the site with high anthropogenic intensity. Although at varying rates, these forests are functioning as important carbon sinks. The results on carbon accumulation rates have important implications in greenhouse gas mitigations and forest change modelling in the context of changing global climate. Keywords Anthropogenic disturbances Biomass Carbon accumulation rates Forest carbon pools Forest structure Southern Mexico
Introduction Project funding: This work was supported by Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologı´a (CONACYT) Me´xico (Grant No. 381, estrategias de mitigacio´n de impactos ambientales de sector agropecuario en Chiapas). The online version is available at https://www.springerlink.com Corresponding editor: Yu Lei & Deb R. Aryal [email protected] 1
CONACYT-UNACH, Facultad de Ciencias Agrono´micas, Universidad Auto´noma de Chiapas, Carretera OcozocoautlaVillaflores km 84.5, 30470 Villaflores, CHIS, Mexico
2
Facultad de Ciencias Agrono´micas, Universidad Auto´noma de Chiapas, Carretera Ocozocoautla-Villaflores km 84.5, 30470 Villaflores, CHIS, Mexico
Forest ecosystems have strong control over atmospheric CO2 concentration for their vital role as carbon sinks (Le Que´re´ et al. 2009; Ciais et al. 2013). This carbon sink removes nearly one-fourth of the annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions from the atmosphere (Liu et al. 2015). During the decades of 1960 to 2000, extensive deforestation and degradation in the tropics emitted about 0.4–2.3 Pg of
Data Loading...
