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Characteristic of tradeoffs between timber production and carbon storage for plantation under harvesting impact: A case study of Huitong National Research Station of Forest Ecosystem

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Abstract

The tradeoffs and optimizations of ecosystem services are the key research fields of ecology and geography. It is necessary to maximize the overall benefit of timber production and carbon storage for forest ecological development in China. We selected the Huitong National Research Station of Forest Ecosystem as our study area, and used InVEST model to evaluate timber production and carbon storage quantitatively. The results showed that: (1) While timber production increased with harvesting intensity over the planning horizon, carbon storage decreased. There were tradeoffs between timber production and carbon storage according to the significant negative relationship. (2) While the overall benefit of timber production and carbon storage increased with harvesting intensity, the value of tradeoffs decreased. T1 and T2 scenarios, with harvesting intensity of 10%–20% every 10 years, are the optimum management regimes for the two ecosystem services to gain more benefit and less tradeoffs. (3) The current harvesting intensity in Huitong County was slightly higher than the optimum harvesting intensity. On practical dimension, these findings suggested that obvious objectives are needed to formulate the corresponding countermeasures of tradeoffs, in order to realize the improvement of ecosystem services and the optimization of ecosystem structures.

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Acknowledgments

We appreciation Professor Wang Silong, Yan Shaokui, Yu Xiaojun, Zhang Xiuyong and Huang Ke at Huitong National Research Station of Forest Ecosystem for their help in data collection. We also would like to express our deep thanks to our colleagues Zhou Heng, Zhang Xiao and Xu Jianning for their assistance of field work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, CAS, Beijing, 100101, China

    Jianjia Zhu, Erfu Dai, Du Zheng & Xiaoli Wang

  2. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jianjia Zhu, Erfu Dai, Du Zheng & Xiaoli Wang

  3. National Marine Data and Information Service Center, Tianjin, 300171, China

    Xiaoli Wang

Authors
  1. Jianjia Zhu
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  2. Erfu Dai
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  3. Du Zheng
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  4. Xiaoli Wang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Erfu Dai.

Additional information

Foundation: The National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program), No.2015CB452702; National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41571098, No.41530749; Key Programs of Chinese Academy of Sciences, ZDRW-ZS-2016-6-4-4; Major Consulting Project of Strategic Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.Y02015003; China Clean Development Mechanism Fund Grant Program (Climate Change Risk and Countermeasures in Xinjiang Region)

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Zhu, J., Dai, E., Zheng, D. et al. Characteristic of tradeoffs between timber production and carbon storage for plantation under harvesting impact: A case study of Huitong National Research Station of Forest Ecosystem. J. Geogr. Sci. 28, 1085–1098 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-018-1543-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11442-018-1543-4

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