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Carbon concentrations of components of trees in 10-year-old Populus davidiana stands within the Desertification Combating Program of Northern China

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Abstract

Most studies do not consider the potential variation in carbon concentration among the different tree components of the same species in regional scale. This study examined the carbon concentrations of the components (i.e., foliage, branch, stem, and root) in a 10-year-old poplar species (Populus davidiana Dode) from the Desertification Combating Program of Northern China. The highest and lowest carbon concentrations were found in the stem and foliage, respectively. There was a significant difference in carbon concentrations among the different tree components. All of the observed carbon concentrations of tree components were lower than those predicted using the conversion factor of 0.5 applied to component biomass. Stem carbon made up 59.7% of the total tree biomass carbon. The power equation estimating proportion of tree biomass carbon against the independent variable of diameter at breast height explained more than 90% of the variability in allocation of carbon among tree components. Tree height, as a second independent variable is also discussed. Our results suggest that the difference in organic carbon concentration among tree components should be incorporated into accurately develop forest carbon budget. Moreover, further investigations on how the diameter at breast height equation developed in the present study performs across broader scales are required.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geographical Sciences, Hebei Academy of Sciences, Shijiazhuang, 050011, China

    Huitao Shen, Quanhong Xu, Dengpan Xiao & Yanxia Zhao

  2. Key Laboratory for Agricultural Water Resources, Hebei Key Laboratory for Agricultural Water-Saving, Center for Agricultural Resources Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shijiazhuang, 050021, China

    Huitao Shen, Wanjun Zhang & Jiansheng Cao

  3. Institute of Agro-food Science and Technology, Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Jinan, 250100, China

    Xiang Zhang

  4. College of Agriculture, Kunming University, Kunming, 650214, China

    Xue Yang

Authors
  1. Huitao Shen
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  2. Wanjun Zhang
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  3. Jiansheng Cao
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  4. Xiang Zhang
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  5. Quanhong Xu
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  6. Xue Yang
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  7. Dengpan Xiao
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  8. Yanxia Zhao
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Correspondence to Jiansheng Cao.

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Shen, H., Zhang, W., Cao, J. et al. Carbon concentrations of components of trees in 10-year-old Populus davidiana stands within the Desertification Combating Program of Northern China. Front. Earth Sci. 10, 662–668 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-016-0562-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-016-0562-7

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