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Stem, branch and leaf biomass-density relationships in forest communities

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Ecological Research

Abstract

Defining and quantifying biomass–density relationships in dense plant stands has been a long-standing issue in both theoretical and empirical studies. Most existing/traditional studies focus on whole plant individuals, without considering different plant components (e.g., stem, branch and leaf). However, the analysis of biomass–density relationships for different plant parts is linked to those for whole plants, and thus important for understanding plant strategies for utilizing resources and community dynamics. In our study, we investigated standing stem (M S), branch (M B) and leaf (M L) biomass–density relationships, across a range of forest communities in China. The results showed that there was no constant predicted value (e.g., −1/2 or −1/3 for M S; −1/2, −1/3 or 0 for M B and M L) that can describe all the relationships, and that the scaling exponents for stem, branch and leaf biomass varied across different forest types. In particular, standing leaf biomass (leaf biomass per unit area) was not constant in these forest communities. Furthermore, stem biomass–density lines were steeper than corresponding branch and leaf lines across most of these forest communities.

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Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Jacob Weiner, the anonymous reviewers and the handling editor for their insightful comments and suggestions on the manuscript. The authors also thank Dr. Tianxiang Luo (Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China) for providing helpful information for this paper. The study was supported financially by the Natural Science Fund of China (30730020) and Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2011AA100503).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310058, China

    Wei-Ping Zhang & Gen-Xuan Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Soil and Water Conservation and Desertification Combating, Ministry of Education, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Xin Jia

  3. School of Science and Health, University of Western Sydney, Richmond, NSW, 2753, Australia

    E. Charles Morris

  4. Faculty of Pharmacy, Guangxi Traditional Chinese Medical University, Nanning, 530001, China

    Yan-Yuan Bai

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  1. Wei-Ping Zhang
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  2. Xin Jia
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  3. E. Charles Morris
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  4. Yan-Yuan Bai
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  5. Gen-Xuan Wang
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Correspondence to Gen-Xuan Wang.

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Zhang, WP., Jia, X., Morris, E.C. et al. Stem, branch and leaf biomass-density relationships in forest communities. Ecol Res 27, 819–825 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-012-0959-z

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