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posted by chromas on Monday October 08 2018, @09:09AM   Printer-friendly
from the maximum-strength dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

Species-rich forests store twice as much carbon as monocultures

In 2009, BEF-China began as a unique forest biodiversity experiment in collaboration between institutions in China, Germany and Switzerland. The large-scale project investigated the importance of tree species richness for the good functioning of forest ecosystems. Stands of trees comprising different numbers of species were planted -- from monocultures to highly species-rich plots with 16 different tree species on an area of 670 square meter.

After eight years, such species-rich forest plots stored an average of 32 tons of carbon per hectare in aboveground biomass. By contrast, monocultures averaged only 12 tons of carbon per hectare -- less than half as much. During photosynthesis, the plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert the carbon to biomass. When a forest stores more carbon, this helps reduce greenhouse gases and at the same time also indicates high forest productivity.

The fact that biodiversity increases productivity had previously been demonstrated through experiments in grassland ecosystems in Europe and the USA. By contrast, since it was assumed that all tree species occupy similar ecological niches, a minimal effect of biodiversity was conjectured for forests. Evidently, however, this assumption was wrong. "In the forest biodiversity experiment, biomass increased just as quickly with species richness as it did in the meadow ecosystems. As a result, even after just four years, there were clear differences between the monocultures and the species-rich forests," explains Prof. Helge Bruelheide of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, co-director of the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), which together with the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Adacemy of Sciences oversaw the field experiments. These differences grew continuously over further four years.

Impacts of species richness on productivity in a large-scale subtropical forest experiment. Science, 2018; 362 (6410): 80 DOI: 10.1126/science.aat6405


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 08 2018, @03:39PM (#745987)

    You get different tree-heights, different leaves, probably different types of secondary vegetation custom to the different tree types. Together, a wider range of light energy gets absorbed, over a wider growth window. So more growth and CO2 storage.
    I didn't read the article, but is the surprise that it yields more or that it's such a big difference?

    If one tree type grows between Feb - Sept and the other from April to Nov, the available light to the trees in Feb,March / Oct,Nov would be relatively higher then when it is only one tree type, it's neighbor tree isn't blocking his light with leaves yet.
    Can anyone tell, if different leaves can absorb different wave lengths? I'm speculating yes, but it's a wild guess.

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  • (Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Monday October 08 2018, @05:52PM

    by insanumingenium (4824) on Monday October 08 2018, @05:52PM (#746041) Journal

    My wild guess would be no, to the best of my knowledge there is only a few versions of Chlorophyll, of which only 2 appear in plants.

  • (Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:10AM

    by dry (223) on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:10AM (#746275) Journal

    Another consideration is mixed forests are likely to have nursery trees. Around here, first the Alder move in. Grow really fast, fix nitrogen, drop lots of leaves as fertilizer, die fairly quick and rot quick. Then you might get Maples, which also enrich the soil with leaves, and finally you get the conifers (they have likely been there the whole time, waiting for a hole in the canopy) which grow large and some types are very slow rotting if and when they come down.
    The Alder and to a lesser degree, Maples also allow a lot more undergrowth to exist, especially compared to a mature conifer forest.