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›› 2013, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (1): 57-75.

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Interaction among climate change,fire disturbance and ecosystem carbon cycle

HU Hai?qing1,WEI Shu?jing1,SUN Long1,WANG Ming?yu2   

  1. 1   College of Forestry,Northeast Forestry University,Harbin  150040,Heilongjiang,China;2   Research Institute of Forest Ecology,Environment and  Protection,Chinese Academy of Forest,Beijing 100091,China
  • Received:2012-05-18 Revised:2012-07-24 Online:2013-01-25

Abstract: Climate change have been drawn wide attention by the government,academic field and the public. Meanwhile,those issues have a significant effect on fire disturbance and forest ecosystem carbon cycle. Climate warming is one key issue of global change and plays an important role on carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems. Carbon storage of forest ecosystem is a basic parameter of studying carbon exchange between forest ecosystem and atmosphere,and an essential factor of estimating the absorption and discharge of forest ecosystem. Biomass burning is the burning of living and dead vegetation. Biomass burning is a significant global source of gaseous and particulate matter emissions to the atmosphere. Biomass burning has long been recognized as a significant source of a number of important trace gas species and particulate matter to the atmosphere. Forest fires are a major contributor of atmospheric gaseous and particulate pollutants. In forest fires are emitted significant amounts of gaseous and particulate matter pollutants into the atmosphere. Forest fires can play a significant role in atmospheric chemistry and contribute to climate change. Forest fire emissions can be important for local air pollution levels. The potential climate change mitigation benefits of carbon sequestration by forested ecosystems have garnered both national and international attention. Biomass burning due to anthropogenic activities has significant impact on the atmospheric chemistry,climate and on the global biogeochemical cycles. In many regions of the world,fires are an important and highly variable source of air pollutant emissions,and they thus constitute a significant if not dominant factor controlling the interannual variability of the atmospheric composition. This paper reviews the recent advance in our understanding of interaction among climate change,fire disturbance and ecosystem carbon cycle and underlying mechanisms. It also discusses the state-of-the-art in quantifying fire disturbance and ecosystem carbon cycle in modeling and its applications to carbon cycle assessment. The paper has described systematically mutual interaction among climate change,fire disturbance and ecosystem carbon cycle from the two aspects of the system. The focus of the paper is climate warming on the impact of fire disturbance and two-way feedback. The paper has described from the impact of climate change on fire disturbance and fire disturbance to climate change affects two aspects of the interaction relationship between the two aspects,fire disturbance and forest ecosystem carbon cycle interaction,respectively,from the impact of fire disturbance on forest ecosystem carbon cycle model in the simulation of fire disturbance on forest ecosystems in the carbon cycle affect two aspects of discourse fire disturbance on forest ecosystem carbon cycle and its quantitative evaluation model approach. The has elaborated fire disturbance in the context of climate warming on the carbon cycle of forest ecosystems. Fire disturbance on the atmospheric carbon cycle and fire disturbance on biomass carbon pool,atmospheric carbon pool,soil carbon pool and its turnover,forest litter carbon pool and its turnover were expounded,respectively. The paper has examined the model of fire disturbance on forest ecosystem carbon cycle. It found that the fire disturbance with the direct carbon emissions more perfect model approach,while the indirect effects of the carbon cycle model is not mature,and many methods are limited to qualitative description. The problem of cross-scale fire disturbance on carbon cycling should be further explored,focusing on integration of field measurements,remote sensing observations and model simulation scale conversion. Finally,under the background of climate warming and the fire disturbance to the forest ecosystem and the effect to carbon cycle,the paper has proposed the effective forest fire management the measures as well as the present need to strengthen in some research area and research direction.

Key words: climate change, carbon cycling, fire disturbance, model simulating, forest fire disturbance management

CLC Number: 

  • S718.5