20 mar. 2018 - Mathias Mayer

Forest disturbance and climate change – effects on the carbon cycle

Presenta: Mathias Mayer

Co-authors: Bradley Matthews, Hans Sandén, Boris Rewald, Christoph Rosinger, Helmut Schume, Taru Sandén, Sari Stark, Lars Ola Nilsson, Jane Uhd Jepsen, Piippa Wäli, Norbu Wangdi, Kuenzang Om, Cheten Thinley, Dorji Drukpa, Tshewang Dorji, Andras Darabant, Purna Bdr. Chhetri, Iftekhar Uddin Ahmed, Christina Lynn Staudhammer, Robert Jandl, Andreas Schindlbacher, Peter Hietz, Georg Gratzer, Douglas L. Godbold, Klaus Katzensteiner

Institute of Forest Ecology, Universität für Bodenkultur (BOKU), Wien, Austria

Storms, insects and droughts can significantly affect the carbon (C) cycle of forest ecosystems and its feedback to the atmospheric system. As disturbances and extreme weather conditions are projected to intensify under climate change, this might have drastic effects on the C sink potential of forest ecosystems. Our understanding of how C fluxes and stocks respond to different disturbances and climatic extremes is, however, far from complete. In this presentation, studies on the effects of windthrows, insect infestations and severe drought events on the forest C cycle will be presented. Dr Mayer will show how he and his group investigated C fluxes and its underlying mechanisms using a range of field (e.g. flux chambers, eddy covariance) and laboratory (e.g. enzyme assays) measurement techniques. Results from mountainous forest test sites in the Austrian Alps, from moth-disturbed birch stands in the subarctic Tundra of Scandinavia, and from a monsoon-failure experiment in the Himalayas of Bhutan will be presented.

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