Soil Carbon Sequestration Potentiality Of Typical Forests In The Qingling Mountains

Carbon sequestration and its decomposition in forest soil directly influence carbon storage in the terrestrial ecosystem and global carbon balance. The minor change of soil carbon pool may aggravate the emission of greenhouse gases in atmosphere. Forest carbon sequestration has advantages as low cost, huge potentiality, high comprehensive income, and more feasibility, and it has become one of the important strategies for China government to tackle climate change. To better understand potentiality of carbon sequestration from forest soil and its influenced factors benefits to explore mechanism of forest carbon sequestration and forest soil carbon management. In this study, Pinus armandi and Quercus aliena var.acutesrrata forests with different age groups widely distributing in the Qinling Mountains were selected. Their soil carbon densities were analyzed and carbon sequestration potentialities were predicted by the transfer matrix of markov chain method. The main results were following:(1) The carbon density of vegetation and soil increased with forest ages among four forest age groups.(2) Content of soil organic carbon correlated extremely significantly(P<0.01) to content of total nitrogen in the Pinus armandi and Quercus aliena var. Acutesrrataforest stands.Content of soil organic carbon correlated significantly(P<0.05) to content of total phosphorus in the Pinus armandi stand. Content of soil organic carbon correlated extremely significantly(P<0.01) to content of total phosphorus in the Quercus aliena var. Acutesrrata stand. Extremely significant difference was found(P<0.01) between soil organic carbon density and vegetation biomass in the Quercus aliena var. Acutesrrata stand. No significant difference was found in the Pinus armandi stand.(3) The annual sequestration of soil carbon in Pinus armandi and Quercus aliena var.Acutesrrata stands among different age groups was(0.982 ± 0.092) t C·hm-2·a-1 and(1.055 ±0.107) t C·hm-2·a-1 respectively.(4)The soil carbon density was predicted more than 120 t·hm-2 when the stands were 100 years old.