Abstract
Understanding the influencing factors of the spatio-temporal variability of soil respiration (R s) across different ecosystems as well as the evaluation model of R s is critical to the accurate prediction of future changes in carbon exchange between ecosystems and the atmosphere. R s data from 50 different forest ecosystems in China were summarized and the influences of environmental variables on the spatio-temporal variability of R s were analyzed. The results showed that both the mean annual air temperature and precipitation were weakly correlated with annual R s, but strongly with soil carbon turnover rate. R s at a reference temperature of 0°C was only significantly and positively correlated with soil organic carbon (SOC) density at a depth of 20 cm. We tested a global-scale R s model which predicted monthly mean R s (R s,monthly) from air temperature and precipitation. Both the original model and the reparameterized model poorly explained the monthly variability of R s and failed to capture the inter-site variability of R s. However, the residual of R s,monthly was strongly correlated with SOC density. Thus, a modified empirical model (TPS model) was proposed, which included SOC density as an additional predictor of R s. The TPS model explained monthly and inter-site variability of R s for 56% and 25%, respectively. Moreover, the simulated annual R s of TPS model was significantly correlated with the measured value. The TPS model driven by three variables easy to be obtained provides a new tool for R s prediction, although a site-specific calibration is needed for using at a different region.
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Acknowledgments
This study was jointly funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 30590381), Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX2-YW-432), Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. CXTD-Z2005-1), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 30700110, Grant No. 30800151), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 78210031). The authors thank all related staff of ChinaFLUX for their contribution to field work and data processing.
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Zheng, ZM., Yu, GR., Sun, XM. et al. Spatio-Temporal Variability of Soil Respiration of Forest Ecosystems in China: Influencing Factors and Evaluation Model. Environmental Management 46, 633–642 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9509-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-010-9509-z