C and N Functioning in Forest Ecosystems
A special issue of Forests (ISSN 1999-4907). This special issue belongs to the section "Forest Ecology and Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 March 2022) | Viewed by 2106
Special Issue Editor
Interests: forest and grassland ecosystems; C and N reserve; plant soil interaction; rhizosphere; soil organic matter; soil biodiversity; climate change; forest management
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Understanding and predicting the future role of forest ecosystems in the context of global change constitutes an important scientific challenge. The ecological and economic services (preservation of biodiversity, wood production) provided by forest ecosystems and their roles in biogeochemical cycles are considerable. Forests largely contribute to biosphere carbon exchange and the carbon stock. Ecosystem respiration almost balances photosynthetic carbon assimilation in forest ecosystems. The net ecosystem exchange is one order of magnitude lower than the two gross fluxes. Small variations in one of these two fluxes due to climatic changes would indeed strongly affect the carbon budget of the ecosystem and its ability to sequester carbon, possibly leading to positive or negative feedback. Moreover, nitrogen is a limiting factor in carbon sequestration in many forest ecosystems. In a context where carbon fixation by temperate forest ecosystems increases due to the increase in CO2 and the lengthening of the vegetation cycle, we can only speculate about the influence of nitrogen on the capacity of carbon sequestration by these forests in the near future. Deepening our knowledge on C and N functioning in forest ecosystems is crucial and must be explored on different scales, from the soil–tree system to forest ecosystems.
In this Special Issue of Forests, we propose to aggregate innovative new research on the characterization of C and N functioning in temperate, boreal, and tropical forest ecosystems. It will notably concern research on C and N cycling in forests, trees, and all the plant and soil processes involved in these cycles: internal C and N allocation, assimilation, storage, fruiting, interaction between tree and soil, tree–soil C and N transfer, forest soil organic matter dynamics, and more globally, forest ecosystems fluxes. It will include both experimental approaches and soil–vegetation–atmosphere transfer models. Indeed, these models are a key tool for predicting the response of carbon and nitrogen exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere in response to climate change, as well as for studying the feedback between the climate and ecosystem functions. However, there is still a lack of mechanistic description concerning the carbon and nitrogen cycle and, therefore, these models are unable to accurately predict carbon residence time or the importance of the N cycle in each of the ecosystem compartments. The influence of biotic (pests) and abiotic (climate, forest management) factors on the C and N cycles can be included in the proposed studies
Dr. Stéphane Bazot
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- C and N cycles
- tree–soil system
- forest ecosystem
- allocation
- organic matter
- climate
- forest management pests
- models
