NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: South Slave Region

Tags: carbon budget, carbon fluxes, carbon dioxide, dendrochronology, boreal forests, forest litter, jack pine, soil respiration

Objective(s): Possibility of the climate warming demands detailed analysis of carbon budget in boreal forest ecosystems that may be the major site of carbon sink on the earth. We propose to examine the carbon dynamics of jack pine forests in Wood Buffalo National Park by the use of a production ecological method applied to chronosequence of even-aged stands. The purpose to present patterns of carbon dynamics by measuring biomass increment, amount of litter, and heterotrophic soil respiration.

Project Description: Northern forests are closely connected to the problem of global warming, because they are likely to be absorbing much of carbon dioxide that was dumped to the air by the humans in the world. the amount that these forests are absorbing, however is not clear. We will measure this amount of carbon fixation by the boreal forests with an ecological method in Wood Buffalo National Park. A new technique will be developed for this purpose. At this end, we hope to have a method for telling the amount of carbon that is going in and out of the forest ecosystem of various tree sizes and ages, and for any given year in the past. Field investigations will include 3 major activities: 1) collection above ground litter of leaves, branches, and other materials in two stands of jack pine that vary in stand age; 2) measurement of soil respiration in approximately four stands of jack pine and 3) cutting about ten black spruce trees of various sizes, and weighing them for development of biomass equations for this species. A series