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Topographic and climatic controls on soil environments and net primary production in a rugged temperate hardwood forest in Korea

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Ecological Research

Abstract

Eight years (1994–2001) of field data and a biogeochemical process model, BIOME-BGC, were used to examine effects of local topography and inter-annual climatic variability on soil physical (i.e., soil moisture and temperature) and biogeochemical (i.e., organic matter content, soil respiration, and leaf litter production) variables in a temperate hardwood forest in Korea. The field data were collected from adjacent south-facing (S) and north-facing (N) slopes, respectively, to examine effects of local topography, and were utilized to validate predictability according to BIOME-BGC which was applied to model unmeasured hydro-ecological processes [i.e., evapotranspiration, net primary production (NPP), and net ecosystem exchange of carbon]. Our field-data analyses indicated that soil-related variables including soil temperature, water content, organic matter, soil respiration, and floor leaf litter store significantly differed between the S and N slopes, while leaf litter production did not differ as significantly as the soil-related variables. The BIOME-BGC predictions showed good agreement with the mean field data aggregated across the slopes. Our simulation results and field observations indicated that the inter-annual variations of leaf litter production and maximum leaf area index were best explained by precipitation, both at a 1-year lag, while variation in annual NPP was well correlated with precipitation without a temporal lag. Our results imply that: (1) local topography needs to be explicitly considered in ecosystem studies as a forcing function generating spatial heterogeneity in soil physical and biogeochemical variables within a rugged landscape, and (2) water limits vegetation productivity in our study forest, in spite of a relatively high annual precipitation rate (1,579 mm year−1).

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Acknowledgements

We greatly appreciate the help of our colleagues who shared field work at Mt. Jumbong forest and Monk Sungil for his invaluable assistance during our field work. This research was supported by a grant (1-8-2) from the Sustainable Water Resources Research Center of the Twenty-First Century Frontier Research Program and from the Eco-technopia 21 Project (Ministry of Environment, Korea). Sinkyu Kang was supported by a grant from Kangwon National University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science, Kangwon National University, Chunchon, Kangwon-do, 200-701, Republic of Korea

    Sinkyu Kang

  2. Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University, Seoul, 151-742, Republic of Korea

    Dowon Lee & Jangho Lee

  3. Numerical Teradynamic Simulation Group, School of Forestry, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, 59812, USA

    Steven W. Running

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  1. Sinkyu Kang
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  2. Dowon Lee
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  3. Jangho Lee
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  4. Steven W. Running
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Correspondence to Sinkyu Kang.

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Kang, S., Lee, D., Lee, J. et al. Topographic and climatic controls on soil environments and net primary production in a rugged temperate hardwood forest in Korea. Ecol Res 21, 64–74 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-005-0095-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11284-005-0095-0

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