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Stand density and species richness affect carbon storage and net primary productivity in early and late successional temperate forests differently

  • Original Article
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Ecological Research

Abstract

How stand density and species richness affect carbon (C) storage and net primary productivity (NPP) changes with forest succession is poorly understood. We quantified the C storage of trees and the aboveground NPP in an early successional secondary birch forest (birch forest) and a late successional mixed broadleaf-Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis) forest (mixed forest) in northeastern China. We found that: 1) tree C storage in the mixed forest (120.3 Mg C ha−1) was significantly higher than that in the birch forest (78.5 Mg C ha−1), whereas the aboveground NPP was not different between the two forest types; and 2) only stand density had a positive linear relationship with tree C storage and aboveground NPP in the birch forest. In the mixed forest, both tree C storage and aboveground NPP were significantly affected by the combination of the stand density and species richness. The tree C storage to stand density and species richness relationships were hump-shaped. The aboveground NPP increased with increasing stand density, but its relationship to species richness was hump-shaped. We conclude that the effect of stand density and species richness on tree C storage and aboveground NPP was influenced by forest stand succession, and such effects should be considered in studying stand density- and species richness- ecosystem function (e.g., C storage and NPP) relationships in temperate forest ecosystems.

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Acknowledgments

We thank numerous students in Northeast Forestry University for their assistance in the field. This work was financially supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (DL13EA05) and the Program for Changjiang Scholars and Innovative Research Team in Universities (IRT_15R09). We also would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their constructive and valuable comments concerning the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Ecological Research, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, 150040, China

    Huiying Cai & Guangze Jin

  2. School of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, 150040, China

    Xueying Di

  3. Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2E3, Canada

    Huiying Cai & Scott X. Chang

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  1. Huiying Cai
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  2. Xueying Di
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  4. Guangze Jin
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Correspondence to Guangze Jin.

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Cai, H., Di, X., Chang, S.X. et al. Stand density and species richness affect carbon storage and net primary productivity in early and late successional temperate forests differently. Ecol Res 31, 525–533 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-016-1361-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-016-1361-z

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