Carbon and nitrogen accumulation and decomposition from coarse woody debris in a naturally regenerated Korean red pine (pinus densiflora S. et Z.) forest

Authors

Nam Jin Noh, Michigan Technological UniversityFollow
Tae Kyung Yoon, Korea Environment Institute
Rae-Hyun Kim, National Institute of Forest Science
Nicholas Bolton, Michigan Technological UniversityFollow
Choonsig Kim, Gyeongnam National University of Science and Technology
Yowhan Son, Korea University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-16-2017

Department

College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science

Abstract

The contribution of coarse woody debris (CWD) to forest carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) dynamics is poorly quantified. This study quantified total C and N content in CWD and estimated the decomposition rates of CWD at different decay stages in a 70-year-old naturally regenerated Korean red pine forest (Pinus densiflora S. et Z.). The N concentration in CWD varied among species and decay classes (from 0.15% to 0.82%), and exhibited a decreasing pattern in C:N ratios with increasing decay class. Total CWD amounts of 4.84 Mg C ha⁻¹, dominated by pine logs (45.4%) and decay class III (40.0%), contained total N of 20.48 kg N ha⁻¹, which was approximately nine times the N input from annual tree mortality. In addition, this study demonstrated that the decay constant rate k was 0.2497 for needle litter, whereas k values were 0.0438, 0.0693, 0.1054, and 0.1947 for red pine CWD of decay class I, II, III, and IV, respectively. The decay rates were significantly related to wood density, N concentration, and C:N ratio across the decay classes of CWD. The results suggest that the C:N ratio of CWD is a key factor affecting its decomposition.

Publisher's Statement

© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Publisher’s version of record: https://doi.org/10.3390/f8060214

Publication Title

Forests

Recommended Citation

Noh, N., Yoon, T. K., Kim, R., Bolton, N., Kim, C., & Son, Y. (2017). Carbon and nitrogen accumulation and decomposition from coarse woody debris in a naturally regenerated Korean red pine (pinus densiflora S. et Z.) forest. Forests, 8(6), 214. http://doi.org/10.3390/f8060214
Retrieved from: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/michigantech-p/1927

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Publisher's PDF