A Coastal Forest Almost 2,000 Years Old is Disappearing
February 14, 2022 Laura Oleniacz
https://news.ncsu.edu/2022/02/a-coastal-forest-almost-2000-years-old-is-disappearing/?fbclid=IwAR2saQOCw6oHmW59gwYdPAcJ3e1EuSEOzT--7hb6oeS2kRuEOqe9bGd7ZAs
Photo credit: John King. Researchers used carbon dating to determine the age of wood samples from a coastal site in North Carolina.
By analyzing ancient wood buried in the soil of a forested wetland in eastern North Carolina, researchers from North Carolina State University have found that the coastal site was a forest almost 1,800 years ago.
Their findings, drawn from carbon dating of wood and organic matter in the soil, illustrate that the forest leaves, wood, roots and current organic wetland soils have stored vast quantities of carbon for thousands of years.
“These freshwater forested wetlands have been storing carbon for millennia,” said study co-author John King, professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State.
To their alarm, the researchers also found that the forest is now undergoing a rapid transition. In a study published in the journal Land, the researchers reported that pond pine forests of the region are experiencing suppressed growth and high mortality, leading to the formation of so-called “ghost forests.” Further, they also saw that a drainage ditch installed next to a road accelerated the ecosystem transition by a factor of 10. The researchers said the ditch likely encouraged inland flooding and salinity during coastal storms.
The Abstract spoke with King and the study’s lead author, Maricar Aguilos, postdoctoral research scholar at NC State, about the transition of freshwater forested wetlands into ghost forests.
The Abstract: How quickly is the forest transitioning, and how do you know?
John King: To give an idea of how fast the change is, if you go down there now – we collected our data in 2014 and 2015 – and you look at what we considered a “healthy” forest then, it has almost completely transitioned to ghost forest now.
Maricar Aguilos: At the time of our measurements, 60% of the trees in the ghost forest were dead or dying. And, as of February 2022, it looks like mortality may be reaching that level in what was the healthy forest in 2015. Flooding and saltwater are invading the freshwater wetland, and we can see ghost forest formation as an indicator of the impact.
Researchers found a forest on one side of a canal transitioned to “ghost forest” earlier than forest on the other side of the road. Credit: John King.TA: Why did you sample the soil, and what did you find?
Aguilos: We wanted to quantify how much carbon was stored in the soil and see how it has changed over time. We found out that it has been there for a very long time, almost 1,800 years. But we also found that the rate of the soil accumulation cannot keep up with the pace of sea-level rise. It’s being submerged.
King: We found pieces of wood distributed throughout the upper layer of organic soil. The deepest piece of wood came from a root system submerged within a layer of soil that has a profile indicating the site was formerly an upland forest. We believe the forest was there about 1,800 years ago, according to radioactive carbon isotope dating.
Also, the carbon dating of the woody debris indicated that the soil accumulation rate decreased the closer we got to modern times. Now, the fact that we’re seeing these ghost forests form suggests the rate of sea-level rise is too fast for the forest to keep up. It’s causing a drastic change. The trees are dying; it’s converting into a shrub ecosystem in the near-term, but we think it’s going to become too wet for the shrubs, and at that point, it will become a marsh.
TA: What should we take away from this?
King: As the ecosystem transitions, all of the carbon in the dead trees will decompose and return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
But what’s going to happen to the carbon stored in the organic soil? Some of it is probably going to decompose and be released to atmosphere as methane. That’s where we start to talk about wetlands as big sources of carbon to the atmosphere.
Wetlands only comprise a small fraction of the global land surface area, but contain about 21% of terrestrial carbon. They’re disproportionately important in storing carbon. But the issue now is as sea level rises, what’s going to be the fate of the carbon that’s contained there?
Aguilos: Rising sea levels are already eating up so much of the land from the freshwater wetland. The transition is moving inland. It is alarming. Can we mitigate the impact of this transition somehow using infrastructure or other interventions to gradually give time for the ecosystem to adapt?
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Their findings, drawn from carbon dating of wood and organic matter in the soil, illustrate that the forest leaves, wood, roots and current organic wetland soils have stored vast quantities of carbon for thousands of years.
“These freshwater forested wetlands have been storing carbon for millennia,” said study co-author John King, professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State.
To their alarm, the researchers also found that the forest is now undergoing a rapid transition. In a study published in the journal Land, the researchers reported that pond pine forests of the region are experiencing suppressed growth and high mortality, leading to the formation of so-called “ghost forests.” Further, they also saw that a drainage ditch installed next to a road accelerated the ecosystem transition by a factor of 10. The researchers said the ditch likely encouraged inland flooding and salinity during coastal storms.
The Abstract spoke with King and the study’s lead author, Maricar Aguilos, postdoctoral research scholar at NC State, about the transition of freshwater forested wetlands into ghost forests.
The Abstract: How quickly is the forest transitioning, and how do you know?
John King: To give an idea of how fast the change is, if you go down there now – we collected our data in 2014 and 2015 – and you look at what we considered a “healthy” forest then, it has almost completely transitioned to ghost forest now.
Maricar Aguilos: At the time of our measurements, 60% of the trees in the ghost forest were dead or dying. And, as of February 2022, it looks like mortality may be reaching that level in what was the healthy forest in 2015. Flooding and saltwater are invading the freshwater wetland, and we can see ghost forest formation as an indicator of the impact.
Researchers found a forest on one side of a canal transitioned to “ghost forest” earlier than forest on the other side of the road. Credit: John King.TA: Why did you sample the soil, and what did you find?
Aguilos: We wanted to quantify how much carbon was stored in the soil and see how it has changed over time. We found out that it has been there for a very long time, almost 1,800 years. But we also found that the rate of the soil accumulation cannot keep up with the pace of sea-level rise. It’s being submerged.
King: We found pieces of wood distributed throughout the upper layer of organic soil. The deepest piece of wood came from a root system submerged within a layer of soil that has a profile indicating the site was formerly an upland forest. We believe the forest was there about 1,800 years ago, according to radioactive carbon isotope dating.
Also, the carbon dating of the woody debris indicated that the soil accumulation rate decreased the closer we got to modern times. Now, the fact that we’re seeing these ghost forests form suggests the rate of sea-level rise is too fast for the forest to keep up. It’s causing a drastic change. The trees are dying; it’s converting into a shrub ecosystem in the near-term, but we think it’s going to become too wet for the shrubs, and at that point, it will become a marsh.
TA: What should we take away from this?
King: As the ecosystem transitions, all of the carbon in the dead trees will decompose and return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide.
But what’s going to happen to the carbon stored in the organic soil? Some of it is probably going to decompose and be released to atmosphere as methane. That’s where we start to talk about wetlands as big sources of carbon to the atmosphere.
Wetlands only comprise a small fraction of the global land surface area, but contain about 21% of terrestrial carbon. They’re disproportionately important in storing carbon. But the issue now is as sea level rises, what’s going to be the fate of the carbon that’s contained there?
Aguilos: Rising sea levels are already eating up so much of the land from the freshwater wetland. The transition is moving inland. It is alarming. Can we mitigate the impact of this transition somehow using infrastructure or other interventions to gradually give time for the ecosystem to adapt?
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Could Sycamore Trees Be an Alternative Fuel Source?
Researchers are studying American sycamore as a potential fuel source. Credit: Omoyemeh Ile.
June 3, 2021 Laura Oleniacz
https://news.ncsu.edu/2021/06/could-sycamore-trees-be-an-alternative-fuel-source/
A new study by NC State researchers found a native tree, the American sycamore, could be a promising candidate as a potential fuel source.
In the journal Biomass and Bioenergy, the researchers reported their findings from growing sycamore trees on a degraded agricultural landscape with relatively little tillage, fertilizers or herbicides. Those factors could contribute to their economic and environmental viability as a fuel source, researchers said. They envision sycamore trees as a product farmers could plant on degraded land both as a source of fuel and to improve the soil.
The Abstract spoke about the study with the study’s lead author, Omoyemeh Ile, graduate student at NC State, and co-author John King, professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State.
TA: What did you find from your study of growing sycamore trees?
Ile: We didn’t set out to study just sycamore. In the beginning, we also planted sweetgum, tulip tree and a poplar hybrid species. But sycamore was the only tree species that survived. There was a drought that followed a cold, wet season, and the other tree species didn’t do well.
In addition to their ability to endure stress, we also found we could grow sycamore using minimal inputs, meaning we used very little herbicides and we didn’t use any fertilizers. Despite this, the trees grew quickly. The productivity was comparable to other known woody fuel sources in the southeastern U.S.
Also, the site where we grew the trees is a degraded agricultural land that is water-logged. We think this means farmers could grow on water-logged, unproductive agricultural lands. We also saw additional benefits, in that the sycamore trees outgrew the weeds and helped suppress them.
TA: What did you learn about the productivity of sycamore?
Ile: We estimated the productivity of the trees by measuring the trees’ mass – first by measuring the trees’ height and the diameter of the trunks. Then we separated the stems, live branches and dead branches to get dry weight values. We used all these to develop biomass equations and apply them to the tree diameters to estimate biomass of each plot.
We found sycamore trees had more productivity when we planted them in a density of 5,000 to 10,000 trees per hectare compared to 2,500 or 1,250 trees per hectare. We think going with 5,000 trees per hectare would be a better option for farmers because we didn’t see any significant difference in the productivity between those two planting densities.
TA: What is your vision for how sycamore could be grown as a crop?
Ile: The ultimate goal is to encourage the widespread adoption of bioenergy-food production systems. If you have a farmer who is struggling with an unproductive farmland or has land that is water-logged, we could tell them, “you could try to keep this land in regenerative agriculture.” That means using the sycamore trees to improve the land’s soil by boosting its organic carbon, soil water retention, and other features. These are some of the things we are working on right now.
TA: Why have sycamores been overlooked in the past?
King: In the past, sycamore has been investigated for timber production by the forest products industry. What they found out in industry studies was that when the sycamore would get to be 12 or 15 years old, they would get bacterial or fungal diseases, and in some cases, a blight could kill the entire plantation.
We have several sites of sycamore in eastern and central North Carolina – one of them is in its 12th year – and we have not had any disease problems. We cut them when they reach three to four years of age, and that keeps it in a juvenile state, which we think may make them less susceptible to the diseases. So far, the evidence bears that out.
TA: How does burning biomass compare to other energy sources in terms of its carbon footprint?
King: There are academics who argue against bioenergy, and especially wood as an energy source, because they feel that it has a net global warming forcing potential. And that’s largely because of a disturbance effect on forests.
The other part is people think that if you start taking everything off the landscape to the lumber mill, and the branches and everything else to the bioenergy plant, then that may be a net nutrient drain on the forest.
My perspective is – we are looking for opportunities to integrate wood energy feedstock production into existing land-use systems. We don’t want to create new demand on forest carbon and nutrient cycles. Rather, we want to integrate wood energy crops into the agricultural production system, just like corn, soybean, and other crops. The benefit of doing that is you’re not creating any new demands on natural or managed forests, and you actually have the potential to improve the carbon footprint of agriculture, the health of agricultural soils, by capturing and storing atmospheric carbon, and also the biodiversity profile of the agricultural landscape, while diversifying rural economies and U.S. domestic energy production
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Natural Forest in Coastal N.C. Becomes Carbon Source as ‘Ghost Forest’ Spreads
Researchers are tracking coastal forests using sensors perched on towers above the tree line. Credit: Maricar Aguilos.
May 3, 2021 Laura Oleniacz
https://news.ncsu.edu/2021/05/natural-forest-in-coastal-n-c-becomes-carbon-source-as-ghost-forest-spreads/
Editor’s Note: This post is part of a series highlighting NC State research into how sea-level rise is impacting people and the environment along the coast.
Standing at the top of a research tower above the tree canopy, Maricar Aguilos could see them: dead and dying trees in the coastal forest below. The trees were victims of climate change – and now they were contributing to it.
“It breaks my heart,” said Aguilos, a postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University.
Aquilos is part of a group of researchers from NC State and the U.S. Forest Service’s Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center that is tracking natural and managed forests near the coast to see how the forests respond to changing climate conditions.
In a study published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, the researchers reported that trees were dying at an increasing rate at Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County, N.C. In 2009, they found approximately one and a half dead trees per acre; that increased to more than six trees per acre by 2017.
The researchers believe the dying trees are a contributing factor to a key finding from their study: the natural forest had become a net source of carbon. In 2009 at the study’s start, the natural forest was storing more carbon than it released; by 2017 it was releasing more carbon than it was taking in. Their findings suggest the forest is both a casualty of climate change, and a contributor.
“Not only are we seeing these forests die, but we’re seeing them switch from a carbon sink to a source function,” said study co-author John King, professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “If that occurs throughout all of the coastal plains, that could be a lot of carbon loss.”
Researchers said the study is one example of how climate change impacts such as sea-level rise, along with weather events like hurricanes, can be major environmental threats to southern coastal forests. Using meteorological sensors placed above the tree line, they’ve been able to study the natural forests, and compare them to coastal pine forests managed for their timber.
“We need long-term studies to better understand the carbon and water processes in forests so we can figure out how to properly manage our wetland resources,” said study collaborator and co-author Ge Sun, director of the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center, and adjunct professor in forestry and environmental resources at NC State.
The Abstract spoke with Aguilos and King about the study.
The Abstract: What is causing the death of trees in the natural forests? What is the potential impact of more trees dying off from a climate change perspective?
John King: The wetland natural forest is comprised of species like cypress and swamp tupelo and to some extent, sweet gum, and a series of species that can tolerate flooding. But in certain parts of our lower coastal plan, it’s becoming so wet and flooded with seawater, it’s causing widespread mortality. The term people use to describe this is “ghost forest.” We are seeing these ecosystems transition before our eyes. It’s telling us that there is very large scale change occurring along our coasts very rapidly.
What we wanted to understand in our recent study is: What’s going to happen to all that carbon? What we saw is, as these forests become stressed by sea-level rise, they’re giving off more methane and carbon dioxide than they’re taking in through photosynthesis. There are additional losses through the water cycle through dissolved organic carbon.
Aguilos: Even if the tree species are flood tolerant, there is a threshold for their tolerance. If you subject the trees to a prolonged stress, such as prolonged flooding, they cannot withstand the pressure. Also, their offspring cannot survive. Their seeds and seedlings beneath the flooded water cannot survive in prolonged flooding. That is why the forest floor has less tree vegetation.
Thus, with more dying trees and less regeneration, the forest’s productivity is reduced, carbon emission is high, and the forests becomes a net carbon source.
TA: What did you see in terms of carbon storage at the managed timber forests?
Aguilos: We saw that timber pine plantations can be a net carbon source depending on the timing of the harvest. In the young plantations, their carbon sequestration increases up to about 15 years of age, and then it stabilizes.
So for 15 years after harvest, the ecosystem will still emit more carbon than it will absorb. And in the second half of the 30-year rotation period, it will absorb more than it can emit. So for the first 15 years of growth, the trees are still recovering and very young, still consuming and needing a lot of energy, while older trees are a carbon sink. They have a large canopy and absorb a lot of carbon.
King: In the mature pine forests, the trees are so productive, that they actually take up more carbon at an ecosystem level than they emit. So as long as those ecosystems are maintained as high productivity pine forests, then it is a net carbon sink.
If something happens where we harvest the trees, carbon uptake is stopped. It takes about 15 years for the system to become a net positive carbon sink. That means that after we harvest the site, those trees have to grow for 15 years before carbon dioxide uptake exceeds carbon dioxide emissions in those systems. This illustrates why we have to do these studies for a long period of time to really understand what’s happening on the landscape.
TA: What are some of the major takeaways from the study?
Aguilos:We are trying to keep track, through long-term studies, of how the carbon is behaving, and the source and sink strength of the ecosystem in a natural state and when we disturb it by land-use change. We want to be able to tell forest managers how to sustainably manage their plantations. If managers can extend their rotations, there is more carbon absorption. At the natural site, we want to be able to make suggestions for saving the forest.
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How Coastal Forests Are Managed Can Impact Water Cycle
https://news.ncsu.edu/2021/03/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
Maricar Aguilos[email protected]
John King[email protected]
Laura Oleniacz, NC State News Services[email protected]
Younger trees take up and release less water than mature trees 10 years or older, researchers from North Carolina State University found in a new study that tracked how water moves through wetland pine forests near the North Carolina coast.
Their findings, published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, suggest managers should time timber harvests to leave older trees alongside new growth to mitigate runoff.
“The water balance, especially in coastal sites, is very important,” said the study’s lead author Maricar Aguilos, postdoctoral research associate in forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “We have so much water there. We wanted to understand how land-use changes impact water use and drainage in the forests, as well as how they affect the growth of the trees.”
The findings come from a long-term research project designed to understand how wetland forests in eastern North Carolina – including pine forests managed for timber and a natural hardwood forest at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County – are responding to changing climate conditions.
Using meteorological sensors perched on towers above the forest canopy, the researchers are able to track water flow to and from the site, including during a severe drought in 2007-2008. They’ve also used the sensors to track carbon sequestration – an important marker for the forests’ ability to mitigate or contribute to climate change. They have gathered data on forest carbon and water cycling spanning 14 years.
“In order to study the response of coastal ecosystems to climate change and sea-level rise, we need long-term observations,” said study co-author John King, professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “The longer we can let those studies run, the better our data will be, and the more effectively we can help inform policy.”
The latest study evaluated how much water the trees use and release as vapor, compared to how much is lost as drainage.
The researchers found that younger pine plantations had increasingly higher “evapotranspiration,” which is the amount of water released in combination from two sources: through evaporation of water from the soil, and the process in which trees consume water and release it from their leaves as vapor, which is known as “transpiration.” Mature plantations had the highest ratio of evapotranspiration to rainfall, and drained less water than younger pine forests.
“We found that the trees use more water as they mature,” said study co-author Ge Sun, a research hydrologist and project leader at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and adjunct professor in forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “Water use stabilized by about year 10 in the pine forests.”
That finding suggests clear-cutting a site and replanting it could lead to increased drainage and flooding off the site initially, but the impacts would diminish as the trees grow.
“The mature plantations help to mitigate effects of forest harvesting on drainage at a landscape scale,” Aguilos said. “If you harvest to leave trees of different ages, they can help each other.”
The study, “Effects of land-use change and drought on decadal evapotranspiration and water balance of natural and managed forested wetlands along the southeastern U.S. lower coastal plain,” was published online in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on March 6, 2021. In addition to Aguilos, King and Sun, other authors included Asko Noormets, Jean-Christophe Domec, Steve McNulty, Michael Gavazzi, Kevan Minick, Bhaskar Mitra, Prajaya Prajapati and Yun Yang. It was supported by the USDA A.5 Carbon Cycle Science Program award No. 2014-67003-22068, the U.S. Department of Energy NICR award 08-SC-NICCR-1072, the USDA Forest Service award 13-JV-11330110-081, and DOE LBNL award DE-AC02-05CH11231.
-oleniacz-
Note to authors: The abstract follows.
“Effects of land-use change and drought on decadal evapotranspiration and water balance of natural and managed forested wetlands along the southeastern U.S. lower coastal plain”
Authors: Maricar Aguilos, Ge Sun, Asko Noormets, Jean-Christophe Domec, Steve McNulty, Michael Gavazzi, Kevan Minick, Bhaskar Mitra, Prajaya Prajapati, Yun Yang and John King.
Published online in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on March 6, 2021.
DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108381
Abstract: Forested wetlands are important in regulating regional hydrology and climate. However, long-term studies on the hydrologic impacts of converting natural forested wetlands to pine plantations are rare for the southern US. From 2005-2018, we quantified water cycling in two post-harvest and newly-planted loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations (YP2–7, 2–7 yrs old; YP2–8, 2–8 yrs old), a rotation-age loblolly pine plantation (MP, 15–28 yrs old), and a natural bottomland hardwood forest (BHF, > 100 yrs old) along the lower coastal plain of North Carolina. We quantified the differences in inter-annual and seasonal water balance and trends of evapotranspiration (ET) using eddy covariance over 37 site-years and assessed key climatic and biological drivers of ET. We found that the rotation-age plantation (MP) had higher annual ET (933 ± 63 mm) than the younger plantations (776 ± 74 mm for YP2–7 and 638 ± 190 mm for YP2–8), and the BHF (743 ± 172 mm), owing to differences in stand age, canopy cover, and micrometeorology. Chronosequence analysis of the pine sites showed that ET increased with stand age up to 10 years, then gradually stabilized for the remainder of the rotation of 28 – 30 years. YP2–8 was sensitive to water availability, decreasing ET by 30 – 43 % during the extreme 2007 – 2008 drought, but reductions in ET at MP were only 8 – 11 %. Comparing to BHF, ditching with management enhanced drainage at YP2–7 and YP2–8, while drainage was lower at the mature pine site. This study provides insight into land use-hydrology-climate interactions that have important implications for forested wetland management in a time of rapidly changing environmental conditions of the LCP of the southern US.
Maricar Aguilos[email protected]
John King[email protected]
Laura Oleniacz, NC State News Services[email protected]
Younger trees take up and release less water than mature trees 10 years or older, researchers from North Carolina State University found in a new study that tracked how water moves through wetland pine forests near the North Carolina coast.
Their findings, published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, suggest managers should time timber harvests to leave older trees alongside new growth to mitigate runoff.
“The water balance, especially in coastal sites, is very important,” said the study’s lead author Maricar Aguilos, postdoctoral research associate in forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “We have so much water there. We wanted to understand how land-use changes impact water use and drainage in the forests, as well as how they affect the growth of the trees.”
The findings come from a long-term research project designed to understand how wetland forests in eastern North Carolina – including pine forests managed for timber and a natural hardwood forest at the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in Dare County – are responding to changing climate conditions.
Using meteorological sensors perched on towers above the forest canopy, the researchers are able to track water flow to and from the site, including during a severe drought in 2007-2008. They’ve also used the sensors to track carbon sequestration – an important marker for the forests’ ability to mitigate or contribute to climate change. They have gathered data on forest carbon and water cycling spanning 14 years.
“In order to study the response of coastal ecosystems to climate change and sea-level rise, we need long-term observations,” said study co-author John King, professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “The longer we can let those studies run, the better our data will be, and the more effectively we can help inform policy.”
The latest study evaluated how much water the trees use and release as vapor, compared to how much is lost as drainage.
The researchers found that younger pine plantations had increasingly higher “evapotranspiration,” which is the amount of water released in combination from two sources: through evaporation of water from the soil, and the process in which trees consume water and release it from their leaves as vapor, which is known as “transpiration.” Mature plantations had the highest ratio of evapotranspiration to rainfall, and drained less water than younger pine forests.
“We found that the trees use more water as they mature,” said study co-author Ge Sun, a research hydrologist and project leader at the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and adjunct professor in forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “Water use stabilized by about year 10 in the pine forests.”
That finding suggests clear-cutting a site and replanting it could lead to increased drainage and flooding off the site initially, but the impacts would diminish as the trees grow.
“The mature plantations help to mitigate effects of forest harvesting on drainage at a landscape scale,” Aguilos said. “If you harvest to leave trees of different ages, they can help each other.”
The study, “Effects of land-use change and drought on decadal evapotranspiration and water balance of natural and managed forested wetlands along the southeastern U.S. lower coastal plain,” was published online in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on March 6, 2021. In addition to Aguilos, King and Sun, other authors included Asko Noormets, Jean-Christophe Domec, Steve McNulty, Michael Gavazzi, Kevan Minick, Bhaskar Mitra, Prajaya Prajapati and Yun Yang. It was supported by the USDA A.5 Carbon Cycle Science Program award No. 2014-67003-22068, the U.S. Department of Energy NICR award 08-SC-NICCR-1072, the USDA Forest Service award 13-JV-11330110-081, and DOE LBNL award DE-AC02-05CH11231.
-oleniacz-
Note to authors: The abstract follows.
“Effects of land-use change and drought on decadal evapotranspiration and water balance of natural and managed forested wetlands along the southeastern U.S. lower coastal plain”
Authors: Maricar Aguilos, Ge Sun, Asko Noormets, Jean-Christophe Domec, Steve McNulty, Michael Gavazzi, Kevan Minick, Bhaskar Mitra, Prajaya Prajapati, Yun Yang and John King.
Published online in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology on March 6, 2021.
DOI: 10.1016/j.agrformet.2021.108381
Abstract: Forested wetlands are important in regulating regional hydrology and climate. However, long-term studies on the hydrologic impacts of converting natural forested wetlands to pine plantations are rare for the southern US. From 2005-2018, we quantified water cycling in two post-harvest and newly-planted loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) plantations (YP2–7, 2–7 yrs old; YP2–8, 2–8 yrs old), a rotation-age loblolly pine plantation (MP, 15–28 yrs old), and a natural bottomland hardwood forest (BHF, > 100 yrs old) along the lower coastal plain of North Carolina. We quantified the differences in inter-annual and seasonal water balance and trends of evapotranspiration (ET) using eddy covariance over 37 site-years and assessed key climatic and biological drivers of ET. We found that the rotation-age plantation (MP) had higher annual ET (933 ± 63 mm) than the younger plantations (776 ± 74 mm for YP2–7 and 638 ± 190 mm for YP2–8), and the BHF (743 ± 172 mm), owing to differences in stand age, canopy cover, and micrometeorology. Chronosequence analysis of the pine sites showed that ET increased with stand age up to 10 years, then gradually stabilized for the remainder of the rotation of 28 – 30 years. YP2–8 was sensitive to water availability, decreasing ET by 30 – 43 % during the extreme 2007 – 2008 drought, but reductions in ET at MP were only 8 – 11 %. Comparing to BHF, ditching with management enhanced drainage at YP2–7 and YP2–8, while drainage was lower at the mature pine site. This study provides insight into land use-hydrology-climate interactions that have important implications for forested wetland management in a time of rapidly changing environmental conditions of the LCP of the southern US.
This featured article was reposted by various science magazines and media outlets
1.ScienMag Science Magazine:
https://scienmag.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
2.Science Daily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210329140751.htm
3.Smartwater Magazine : https://smartwatermagazine.com/
https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/nc-state-university/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle
4.Eurekaalert AAAS
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/ncsu-hcf032921.php
5. Daily Mail India
www.dailymailindia.comhttps://www.dailymailindia.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
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www.press-news.orghttps://press-news.org/159203-how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle.html
7. Peny News (penynews.com)
https://penynews.com/2021/03/29/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle-sciencedaily/?amp
8. DailyNews24hour.com
https://dailynews24hour.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-affect-water-cycle-sciencedaily/
9. Tekno Date
https://teknodate.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
10. All About Farm
http://allaboutfarm.online/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
11. My Droll
https://mydroll.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
12. ENGG Talks Technology News Room
https://www.enggtalks.com/news/153450/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle
13. News Break
https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2193233316993/keeping-mature-trees-could-water-mitigate-drainage-in-coastal-forests
14. Universe Decode
https://universedecode.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle-sciencedaily/
15. Announce Today
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16. Knowledia
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17. Samachar Central
https://samacharcentral.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
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https://phys.org/news/2021-03-coastal-forests-impact.html
19.Title: Younger trees use up and release less water
Author/Featured by: Chrissy Sexton
News Agency: Earth.com News
https://www.earth.com/news/younger-trees-use-up-and-release-less-water/
20. Title: Keeping mature trees could water mitigate drainage in coastal areas
Author/Featured by: Sommer Brokaw
United Press International (UPI) (Science News) Website: www.upi.com
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2021/03/29/study-mature-trees-water-runoff/3821617041042/
21. Wixroom. www.wixroom.com
https://wixroom.com/keeping-mature-trees-could-water-mitigate-drainage-in-coastal-forests-study-finds/
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Impact of harvesting to the carbon budget in Loblolly pine plantations in North Carolina
- a video abstract
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya8mbGOzw0E
https://scienmag.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
2.Science Daily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210329140751.htm
3.Smartwater Magazine : https://smartwatermagazine.com/
https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/nc-state-university/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle
4.Eurekaalert AAAS
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/ncsu-hcf032921.php
5. Daily Mail India
www.dailymailindia.comhttps://www.dailymailindia.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
6. Press-News.org
www.press-news.orghttps://press-news.org/159203-how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle.html
7. Peny News (penynews.com)
https://penynews.com/2021/03/29/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle-sciencedaily/?amp
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https://dailynews24hour.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-affect-water-cycle-sciencedaily/
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https://teknodate.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
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http://allaboutfarm.online/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
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https://mydroll.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
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https://www.enggtalks.com/news/153450/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle
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https://www.newsbreak.com/news/2193233316993/keeping-mature-trees-could-water-mitigate-drainage-in-coastal-forests
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16. Knowledia
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17. Samachar Central
https://samacharcentral.com/how-coastal-forests-are-managed-can-impact-water-cycle/
18. Phys.org
https://phys.org/news/2021-03-coastal-forests-impact.html
19.Title: Younger trees use up and release less water
Author/Featured by: Chrissy Sexton
News Agency: Earth.com News
https://www.earth.com/news/younger-trees-use-up-and-release-less-water/
20. Title: Keeping mature trees could water mitigate drainage in coastal areas
Author/Featured by: Sommer Brokaw
United Press International (UPI) (Science News) Website: www.upi.com
https://www.upi.com/Science_News/2021/03/29/study-mature-trees-water-runoff/3821617041042/
21. Wixroom. www.wixroom.com
https://wixroom.com/keeping-mature-trees-could-water-mitigate-drainage-in-coastal-forests-study-finds/
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Impact of harvesting to the carbon budget in Loblolly pine plantations in North Carolina
- a video abstract
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya8mbGOzw0E