HOW IMPORTANT IS THE ROOT IN THE ROLE OF SHORT ROTATION COPPICE PLANTATIONS AS A CARBON SINK?
2022
The role of plantations as active carbon sinks is widely recognized, their rapid growth over a short time period makes them important contributors to climate change mitigation. The construction of root production models based on the leaf index area could provide an interesting predictive tool for estimating the contribution of roots in terms of carbon, particularly given the difficulty involved in the direct estimation of this fraction and its potential importance in terms of carbon in the soil. The data used for this study came from a poplar short rotation plantation of the highly productive genotype of Populus x canadensis Mönch, established in central Spain in 2017 at a density of 10,000 trees ha-1. A potential non-linear model, which relates root biomass to leaf area index, is presented. The results indicate an explained variance of 0.881. Root biomass of polar plantations under Mediterranean conditions plays a key role in increasing and/or restoring C stocks in the soil, the C carbon content in the root biomass being 5.81 Mg C ha-1 per rotation cycle. This study helps to further our knowledge regarding the real carbon balance of these plantations under Mediterranean environments. © 2022, ETA-Florence Renewable Energies.,
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