DOI 10.1007/s00468-004-0381-4 ORIGINAL ARTICLE

• Main Author: Petteri Muukkonen
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Dy; The Needle; Northern Finland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.631.8265; http://www.metla.fi/hanke/3306/muukkonen_pinelitter_trees_2005.pdf

Abstract To understand carbon cycle and flows of forests, accurate information on tree-component-specific litter pro-duction of trees is needed. In the ecosystem models, the litterfall of living trees is usually predicted by the biomass component by average amounts corresponding to site con-ditions or by multiplying the biomass of the growing stock by the component-specific biomass turnover rate. In this study, the rates of needle biomass turnover of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) were derived from the needle-shed dy-namics. When the rates for needle litter production were modelled, the weighting and yellowing effects were taken into account. The annual biomass turnover rates of needles for southern and northern Finland are 0.21 and 0.10, re-spectively. Species-specific estimation of litter production is essential for understanding the carbon cycle and flows of forests. Biomass turnover rates can provide useful litter production estimates for large areas with average biomass values as a source of data.