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Estimating carbon sequestration in the piedmont ecoregion of the United States from 1971 to 2010

Journal Article · · Carbon Balance and Management
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [2];  [2];  [6]
  1. Western Geographic Science Center, Menlo Park, CA (United States); San Jose State Univ., CA (United States); DOE/OSTI
  2. Western Geographic Science Center, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  3. USGS, Reston, VA (United States)
  4. USDA Forest Service, Durham, NH (United States). Northern Research Station
  5. Arctic Slope Regional Corp., Sioux Falls, SD (United States)
  6. Nanjing Univ. of Information Science and Technology (China). Jiangsu Key Lab. of Agricultural Meterorology
+ Show Author Affiliations
Human activities have diverse and profound impacts on ecosystem carbon cycles. The Piedmont ecoregion in the eastern United States has undergone significant land use and land cover change in the past few decades. The purpose of this study was to use newly available land use and land cover change data to quantify carbon changes within the ecoregion. Land use and land cover change data (60-m spatial resolution) derived from sequential remotely sensed Landsat imagery were used to generate 960-m resolution land cover change maps for the Piedmont ecoregion. These maps were used in the Integrated Biosphere Simulator (IBIS) to simulate ecosystem carbon stock and flux changes from 1971 to 2010. Results: Results show that land use change, especially urbanization and forest harvest had significant impacts on carbon sources and sinks. From 1971 to 2010, forest ecosystems sequestered 0.25 Mg C ha-1 yr-1, while agricultural ecosystems sequestered 0.03 Mg C ha-1 yr-1. The total ecosystem C stock increased from 2271 Tg C in 1971 to 2402 Tg C in 2010, with an annual average increase of 3.3 Tg C yr-1. Conclusions: Terrestrial lands in the Piedmont ecoregion were estimated to be weak net carbon sink during the study period. The major factors contributing to the carbon sink were forest growth and afforestation; the major factors contributing to terrestrial emissions were human induced land cover change, especially urbanization and forest harvest. An additional amount of carbon continues to be stored in harvested wood products. If this pool were included the carbon sink would be stronger.
Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); USGS
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1626920
Journal Information:
Carbon Balance and Management, Journal Name: Carbon Balance and Management Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 11; ISSN 1750-0680
Publisher:
BioMed Central, Ltd. (BMC)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (1)

A Nondestructive, Remote Sensing-Based Estimation of the Economic Value of Aboveground Temperate Forest Biomass (Case Study: Hyrcanian Forests, Nowshahr-Iran) journal February 2020

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