Effects Of Future Climate Change On The Storage Of Soil Organic Carbon In Terrestrial Ecosystems Of China

The global climate change has been having and will have effects on the decompositionand accumulation of soil organic carbon (SOC) in terrestrial ecosystems, thus alteration ofthe exchange fluxes between atmosphere and land would be almost caused, which mightimpose a further accelerating or mitigating effect on the climate change. Our capacity topredict and adapt to the consequences of climate change depends, in part, on a clearunderstanding of SOC storage, spatial distribution and mechanism of its dynamic change.The understanding of the dynamics of SOC storage in terrestrial ecosystems under the futureclimate change has significant implications on the projection of changes of SOC ofterrestrial ecosystems in the future, and the interactions between terrestrial ecosystems andclimate change. In this paper, RothC model is employed to simulate the changes of SOCstorage (0~20cm) in arableland, grassland and forest ecosystems under the future climatechange scenarios of SRES A2 and B1 from 2000 to 2100 projected by NCC/IAP T63 fromNCC (National Climate Center),China Meterological Administration. The results are shown,there are both carbon sinks and carbon sources in three ecosystems under future climatechange. SOC storage would reduce seriously in Xiaoxingan Mountains, Changbai Mountains,Northeast Plain, mid-eastern and northeastern part of Inner Mongolian, North China, fromthe Qinling Mountains to Sichuan Basin, Guangxi Province, Guangdong Province andSouthwestern China Plateau. SOC storage would reduce slightly in West China. SOCstorage would increase in some parts of the Northeastern China, Qinghai, Ningxia, Gansu,east of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Hu'nan Province, Jiangxi Province, Zhejiang Province, theSoutheastern China. In arableland, grassland and forest ecosystems of China, the distributionof the regions as the carbon source are more than that as the carbon sink in terms of spatialscale. The spatial locations of either carbon source or sink is the similar among thearableland, grassland and forest ecosystems, and the changes of SOC keep much the similartrends in the three ecosystems in a specific region as well.Analysis on the effects of individual climate factors of the changes of SOC storage wasalso carried out in this research. The SOC reduces with the increases of temperature. Thechanges of SOC storage occur while the precipitation varies at most cases. In both Northeastparts of China and South China, though temperature would increase, SOC storage wouldreduce in the case of that the precipitation would be more than evaporation;while SOCstorage would increase under the situation of that precipitation would be less thanevaporation. The variations of individual climate factors, such as temperature, precipitationand evaporation in the future climate change scenarios in the different time horizon, have asignificant impose on the SOC storage changes of terrestrial ecosystems in China. Thus, theeffects of temperature, precipitation and evaporation changes in future on SOC storage ofterrestrial ecosysyetems should be thoroughly studied during making a projection of climatechange and taking a measurements on the mitigation in light of the sustainable managementof ecosystems.