The objective of the proposed project is to improve our understanding of carbon cycles in forest ecosystems in temperate zone. It will contribute in improvement of atmospheric carbon dynamics' models connecting with the role of forest on global climatic changes.
The project is focused on the international cooperation between Czech scientists from the Department of Forest Ecology (KEL), the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences (FLD), Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague (ČZU) and the prestigious international platform Global Forest Biodiversity Initiative GFBI (www.gfbinitiative.org). Our institution is planning to contribute with our large dataset of primary forest permanent study plots from the central, southern and south-eastern Europe (project REMOTE, www.remoteforests.org). Joining the platform of GFBI we will be able to use worldwide dataset for our analysis and cooperate with the projects with the global impact and importance. Only the successful cooperation with the access to the global database will allow us to fulfil the aims of our proposal.
The role of forest ecosystems for the atmospheric carbon sequestration is not well parametrized, because of high variability and gradual changes in time of mortality rates and tree growth dynamics. Mortality rates, growth dynamics and climate changes, together with their interactions are not stable parameters as they are mostly assumed within the recent models. But these processes are more complex and they reflect probably many driving factors like tree age, forest structure, site conditions or climate.
Specific aims of the project:
- To analyse the mortality rates in the most common mountain forest types of the central, eastern, and south-eastern Europe using our large database of REMOTE project. Describe the relationship between age, forest structure, and disturbance history and mortality rate. Further, to quantify the importance of different driving factors and their interactions on the forest biomass dynamics and carbon sequestration.
- To analyse the dynamics of the living tree biomass using the same dataset as in 1st aim. Describe the relationship between age, structure, disturbance history, site conditions, and climate (recent and one year ago state) and forest biomass dynamics. Further, to quantify the importance of these relationships on the forest biomass dynamics and carbon sequestration.
- To validate the previous relationships and hypothesis for temperate mountain forests on the global scale using GFBI dataset. To compare the driving factors and their importance for mortality rates and forest biomass dynamics on our dataset comparing with the rest of temperate forest types using GFBI dataset. These differences can be used for more precise parametrization of global carbon dynamics models.
The large dataset of the REMOTE project (more details are in the part 4 Introduction of the methodology) covering long geographical gradient of two mountain primary forest types in central, eastern, and south-eastern Europe is important for disentangling the driving factors of mortality rates and biomass dynamics. The REMOTE dataset contains 34 beech-dominated stands of mixed mountain forests and 32 stands of mountain spruce forests. The mortality rate will be evaluated based on two repeated census of permanent study plots. During the proposed project we would like to re-sample some of our study plots and further some of tree ring cores from south-eastern Europe will be processed. The tree ring cores were sampled and stored, but we will need to process and measure them in the laboratory. Tree rings of individual trees on the permanent study plots will be used for the biomass dynamics. It allows us to study between year variability of forest biomass changes. For the global comparison, only datasets of permanent study plots from the GFBI with the repeated measurements of forest structure and biomass will be included. Dataset of the GFBI consisted of large network of permanent study plots from all the continents of temperate zone. Further, the proposed project will help to keep the continuity of the observation and re-measurement of our long term monitoring network of permanent study plots in temperate primary forests in Europe.