Carbon Cycle

CARBON CYCLE

 

Understanding storage and cycling of carbon in forests has been a major research topic in Ecology for the last two decades. Forests can act as sinks or sources of CO2, depending on their structure, successional state and disturbance history. Therefore FORMIND can be an important tool in understanding long term dynamics of carbon stocks in forests and their dynamics under diverse disturbance regimes.

FORMIND calculates the following carbon stocks:

  • living forest pool, the carbon stored in living trees
  • deadwood pool, the carbon stored in dead trees
  • slow decomposing soil pool, the amount of carbon that decomposed slowly from the deadwood stock
  • fast decomposing soil pool, the amount of carbon that decomposed fast from the deadwood stock

The net ecosystem productivity is then calculated from the gross primary production and respiration of each individual tree (see-> Process: growth) and the respiration of the deadwood and soil stocks.

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