Response of Spruce Forest Ecosystem CO 2 Fluxes to Inter-Annual Climate Anomalies in the Southern Taiga

• Published in: Forests
• Main Authors: Vadim Mamkin, Andrej Varlagin, Irina Yaseneva, Julia Kurbatova
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2022
• Subjects: southern taiga; net ecosystem exchange; CO 2 fluxes; eddy covariance; heatwave 2018; soil moisture; Plant ecology; QK900-989; taiga
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/f13071019; https://doaj.org/article/96cce0f1d90a4a488dc3e3c5dd67174a

Climate extremes and anomalies modify the CO 2 ecosystem–atmosphere exchange of the boreal forests and consequently alter the terrestrial carbon stocks and the atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. The effects of the anomalous weather conditions on the CO 2 net ecosystem exchange (NEE), total ecosystem respiration (TER), and gross primary production (GPP) of the typical southern taiga nemorose spruce forest were analyzed using continuous eddy covariance flux measurements in the 2015–2020 period. The forest was found to be a source of atmospheric CO 2 in 2016, 2017, 2019, and 2020 (the mean annual GPP/TER ratio was between 0.87 and 0.97). In 2018, the forest was found to act as a CO 2 sink (GPP/TER = 1.47) when a positive temperature anomaly in the growing season was accompanied by a negative precipitation anomaly and increased global radiation. The early start of the CO 2 uptake in the anomalously warm winter of 2019/2020 did not result in an increase in the annual GPP/TER ratio (0.90). The comparison of the flux data obtained from the nemorose spruce forest on the well-drained soils with the data obtained from paludified spruce forest in the same landscape showed that the mean annual GPP/TER ratio of the sites alternatively responded to the mentioned anomalies. This study suggests that a variety of soil moisture regimes across the southern taiga spruce forests provide a non-uniformity in the response reactions of the CO 2 ecosystem–atmosphere exchange on the climate anomalies.