Carbon dynamics in woody biomass of forest ecosystem in China with forest management practices under future climate change and rising CO2 concentration

It is critical to study how different forest management practices affect forest carbon sequestration under global climate change regime. Previous researches focused on the stand-level forest carbon sequestration with rare investigation of forest carbon stocks influenced by forest management practices and climate change at regional scale. In this study, a general integrative approach was used to simulate spatial and temporal variations of woody biomass and harvested biomass of forest in China during the 21st century under different scenarios of climate and CO₂ concentration changes and management tasks by coupling Integrated Terrestrial Ecosystem Carbon budget (InTEC) model with Global Forest Model (G4M). The results showed that forest management practices have more predominant effects on forest stem stocking biomass than climate and CO₂ concentration change. Meanwhile, the concurrent future changes in climate and CO₂ concentration will enhance the amounts of stem stocking biomass in forests of China by 12%–23% during 2001–2100 relative to that with climate change only. The task for maximizing stem stocking biomass will dramatically enhance the stem stocking biomass from 2001–2100, while the task for maximum average increment will result in an increment of stem stocking biomass before 2050 then decline. The difference of woody biomass responding to forest management tasks was owing to the current age structure of forests in China. Meanwhile, the sensitivity of long-term woody biomass to management practices for different forest types (coniferous forest, mixed forest and deciduous forest) under changing climate and CO₂ concentration was also analyzed. In addition, longer rotation length under future climate change and rising CO₂ concentration scenario will dramatically increase the woody biomass of China during 2001–2100. Therefore, our estimation indicated that taking the role of forest management in the carbon cycle into the consideration at regional or national level is very important to project the forest carbon sequestration under future climate change and rising atmospheric CO₂ concentration.