Abstract
Context
Harvesting of Mediterranean oak coppice forests has been progressively suspended on a share of cover over the last decades. Positive growth trend in outgrown coppices no longer harvested on short rotations now drives natural forest restoration on wide areas, and it represents a potential carbon sink in view of global warming.
Aims
Our goals were to estimate carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) content per compartment in two deciduous oak outgrown coppice forests, aged differently and growing under unequal site quality, to verify whether C concentration across compartments is in agreement with the conventional conversion rate of 0.5.
Methods
Ecosystem C and N pools were assessed by multiplying the whole coppice mass (combining specific allometric functions, root-to-shoot ratio, and soil sampling) by respective C and N concentrations.
Results
The results point out that the largest percentage of N was stored in 15-cm topsoil (84.06 and 73.34 % at the younger and older site, respectively), whereas the proportion of organic ecosystem C pool was more variable, as a consequence of the amount and allocation of phytomass. We found that, in most cases, C concentration was less than the conventional conversion rate of 0.5, especially in deadwood, O layer, and root compartments.
Conclusion
The findings provide further knowledge of C and N storage into these new built-up forest types and the evidence that a detailed analysis may get higher accuracy in the pools estimate, producing a more reliable outlook on dynamics and climate change mitigation ability of these systems.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Forest Service staff of Poggio Pievano and Caselli forests for their kind hospitality and support during the field and sampling activities. The authors wish to thank the anonymous referees for the careful review that improved an earlier version of the manuscript.
Funding
Funds for this study were provided by the (i) Italian Ministry of Agriculture Food and Forest Policy under the programme Ri.Selv.Italia (Project 3.2 managed by CRA-SEL and Research unit 3.2.1, DIBAF, University of Viterbo), (ii) Regione Toscana under the project Sustainable Forestry into Coppice System managed by CRA-SEL, and (iii) EU AIR2 project MEDCOP, Improvement of Coppice Forests in the Mediterranean Region managed by CRA-SEL.
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Handling Editor: Shuqing Zhao
Contribution of the co-authors
Di Matteo G, De Angelis P, and Fabbio G: conceived and designed the research trial.
Fabbio G: coordinating RISELVITALIA project 3.2 within this work was framed.
Di Matteo G, Tunno I, and Bertini G: carried out sampling, lab analyses, and data analyses.
Nardi P: carried out carbon and nitrogen soil data elaboration.
Di Matteo G, Bertini G, and Fabbio G: wrote the early version of the paper.
Di Matteo G, and Fabbio G: wrote the paper and corrected the referees’ comments and editor’s comments in the following versions of the manuscript.
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Di Matteo, G., Tunno, I., Nardi, P. et al. C and N concentrations in different compartments of outgrown oak coppice forests under different site conditions in Central Italy. Annals of Forest Science 71, 885–895 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-014-0390-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13595-014-0390-4