I am a forest scientist from Guyana, South America, currently completing my PhD in Environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto. My PhD thesis aims to improve our understanding of wood chemical traits – a group of understudied wood/plant traits – and their role in biogeochemical cycling, ecological processes and forest function.
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The importance of wood chemical trait variation in estimating carbon stocks and fluxes in temperate forests.
M. DORAISAMI, G.M. DOMKE, S.C. THOMAS and A.R. MARTIN.
Department of Physical and Environmental Science, University of Toronto Scarborough, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada M1C 1A4
Wood chemical traits are an important dimension of life-history variation among tree species, with multiple hypothesized direct relationships to rates of biogeochemical cycling. However, in the plant ecology literature, variation in wood chemical traits are poorly characterized and studies evaluating their implications for ecosystem functioning are limited. Coarse woody debris (CWD) is an important component of forest carbon (C) cycling, accounting for ~8% of total forest biomass C globally. However, CWD quantities are projected to increase in coming decades due to increased tree mortality. Consequently, accurate estimates of C stocks and fluxes in CWD are becoming more essential in refining global C budgets. Our research 1) quantifies variation in wood chemical traits—namely, wood carbon fractions and wood volatile C fractions—by integrating intensive field sampling of CWD stocks in a large (13.5 ha) forest dynamics plot, with novel characterization of wood chemical traits; and 2) uses these trait data to refine estimates of CWD carbon stocks and fluxes in an unmanaged temperate forest. We show that both wood C fractions and the volatile C fraction vary across species, and that wood chemical trait variation within and among trees is a critical determinant of ecosystem functioning, even after tree death.