Global Warming Effects On Forests

Title: Simulating the carbon balance of a temperate larch forest under various meteorological conditions (2007).

by Motomu Toda*†1, Masayuki Yokozawa†2, Akihiro Sumida1, Tsutomu Watanabe3 and Toshihiko Hara†1
Address: 1Biosphere Dynamics Research Group, Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0819, Japan,
2Department of Global Resources, National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, Ibaraki 305-8604, Japan and 3Cryosphere Environment Research Group, Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Saspporo, 060-0819, Japan

Carbon Balance and Management 2007, 2:6 doi:10.1186/1750-0680-2-6

This global warming effects on forests article is available from: http://www.cbmjournal.com/content/2/1/6
© 2007 Toda et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract:

Background: Changes in the timing of phenological events may cause the annual carbon budget of deciduous forests to change. Therefore, one should take such events into account when evaluating the effects of global warming on deciduous forests. In this article, we report on the
results of numerical experiments done with a model that includes a phenological module simulating the timing of bud burst and other phenological events and estimating maximum leaf area index.

Results: This study suggests that the negative effects of warming on tree productivity (net primary production) outweigh the positive effects of a prolonged growing season. An increase in air temperature by 3°C (5°C) reduces cumulative net primary production by 21.3% (34.2%). Similarly,
cumulative net ecosystem production (the difference between cumulative net primary production and heterotrophic respiration) decreases by 43.5% (64.5%) when temperatures are increased by 3°C (5°C). However, the positive effects of CO₂ enrichment (2 × CO₂) outweigh the negative
effects of warming (<5°C).

Conclusion: Although the model was calibrated and validated for a specific forest ecosystem, the implications of the study may be extrapolated to deciduous forests in cool-temperate zones. These
forests share common features, and it can be conjectured that carbon stocks would increase in such forests in the face of doubled CO₂ and increased temperatures as long as the increase in temperature does not exceed 5°C.

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