The Relative Importance of Succession, Stand Age and Stand Factors on Carbon Allocation of Korean Pine Forests in the Northern Mt. Xiaoxing’anling, China
Exploring carbon allocation pattern and its influencing factors is of great significance for estimating the carbon sequestration rate and potential of forest ecosystems. Here, we investigate all carbon pool components (including above and belowground biomass of tree, shrub and herb layers, and dead biomass and soil carbon pools) in four successional stages of broad-leaved and Korean pine (Pinus koraiensis Siebold &amp; Zucc.) mixed forests in Northeast China. We explore the change of allocation among carbon pools with succession and examine the relative importance of succession, stand age, and stand factors on carbon allocation pattern. Our results illustrate that above- and belowground vegetation carbon increase as maximum tree height increases. Below- to aboveground vegetation carbon ratio (R/S ratio) decreases significantly with succession and increases significantly as mean diameter at breast height (DBH) increases, but does not significantly correlate with stand age. With succession and increasing stand age, understory (shrub, herb) to tree carbon ratio (understory/tree ratio) and soil to vegetation carbon ratio (soil/vegetation ratio) decrease significantly. The joint effect of succession, stand age, and stand factors have the largest contribution on above- and belowground vegetation carbon and understory/tree ratio (26.83%, 27.93%, and 49.48% of variations explained, respectively). As for the pure effects, stand factors explain the largest proportion of variations in vegetation aboveground carbon (11.25%) and soil carbon (20.18%). Meanwhile, succession is the variable with the largest contribution to vegetation belowground carbon (12.64%), R/S ratio (21.83%), understory/tree ratio (25.84%), and soil/vegetation ratio (6.68%). Overall, these results suggest that species composition change during forest succession, instead of stand factors and stand age, is the main driver of forest vegetation carbon allocation. In contrast, stand factors play a major role in soil carbon allocation. Our findings suggest more studies to better understand the role of species composition (in addition to stand factors and age) on biomass allocation, and the influence of stand factors and litterfalls on soil carbon sequestration, which are critical to improve forest management strategies (e.g., adjustment of species composition and forest structure) to increase the future ability of forest carbon sequestration.