Measuring the Effects of Stand Age on Boreal Forest Net Ecosystem Production

This project used NSF and DOE funding to measure and understand how energy and CO2 exchange change as boreal forests in central Canada recover from fire. Boreal stands in Manitoba burn every 50 to 150 years. These fires kill the vegetation, while consuming only a fraction of biomass. The forests regenerate after fire, with the canopy closing in about 30 years. The residue left by the fire gradually decays during this time, possibly causing the forest to become a large, transient source of CO2 for one or more decades following fire. We studied the relationship between stand age and gas exchange by deploying 7 eddy covariance towers in a series of stands that ranged in time since last burn (2, 5, 11, 17, 37, 70, 150 yrs). Data from the study are available at http://www.ess.uci.edu/~boreal_canada/index.html and also in the Fluxnet and AmeriFlux archives.

Publications
Patterns of NPP, GPP, respiration, and NEP during boreal forest succession GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY Volume: 17 Issue: 2 Pages: 855-871 Goulden, M. L.; McMillan, A. M. S.; Winston, G. C.; et al.

Ecosystem carbon dioxide fluxes after disturbance in forests of North America Journal of Geophysical Research (0148-0227) 115:n/a, 2010 Amiro, B. D.; Barr, A. G.; Barr, J. G.; Black, T. A.; Bracho, R.; Brown, M. et al.

Age-dependent variation in the biophysical properties of boreal forests Global Biogeochemical Cycles 22:2, 2008 McMillan, Andrew M. S.; Goulden, M. L.

Age-dependent response of boreal forest to temperature and rainfall variability GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY Volume: 14 Issue: 8 Pages: 1904-1916 McMillan, Andrew M. S.; Winston, Gregory C.; Goulden, Michael L.

The effect of post-fire stand age on the boreal forest energy balance Agricultural and Forest Meteorology (01681923) 140:1-4, 2006 Amiro, B.D.; Orchansky, A.L.; Barr, A.G.; Black, T.A.; Chambers, S.D.; Chapin III, F.S. et al.

The Impact of Boreal Forest Fire on Climate Warming Science (0036-8075 1095-9203) 314:5802, 2006 Randerson, J. T; Liu, H.; Flanner, M. G; Chambers, S. D; Jin, Y.; Hess, P. G et al.

An eddy covariance mesonet to measure the effect of forest age on land-atmosphere exchange GLOBAL CHANGE BIOLOGY Volume: 12 Issue: 11 Pages: 2146-2162 Goulden, Michael L.; Winston, Gregory C.; McMillan, Andrew M. S.; et al.