Asian terrestrial ecosystems make significant contributions to the regional and global C budgets. Accurately quantifying the CO2 /CH4 balance is critical to set emissions reductions targets in these regions and identify and promote effective climate change mitigation strategies. For the past two decades, the Asian observation network and the flux community (AsiaFlux) have made substantial contributions to advancements in soil C flux research.
In a study published in Journal of Agricultural Meteorology, researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) and their international colleagues reviewed the history of soil C flux research, including recent advances in monitoring and modelling approaches and describes future perspectives, focusing on the Asian region.
By the end of 2019, there were more than 100 flux sites in AsiaFlux, spanning forest, shrub, savanna, grassland, farmland, wetland, steppe, tundra, desert, lake, and urban ecosystems.
In the last two decades, soil C flux studies in Asia has improved methods such as continuous measurement with automated chamber systems and compact GHG analyzers. The number of measurements for soil C flux has drastically increased in the Asian region.
These works had contributed to a better understanding of the mechanisms related to soil C dynamics, factors controlling the spatio-temporal variation of soil C fluxes (water, temperature, soil nutrients, C content), and improved model development, regional and global scale estimation, evaluation of the influence of disturbance and climate change on soil C fluxes, including suggestions for policy-makers.
The researchers proposed future research work to be focused on reduction of spatial bias in terms of the location of observations, an increase in the number of long-term continuous datasets and climate manipulation experiments, and a greater number of synthetic studies integrating influential geographical, biological factors and climate change.
Contact
Prof. SHA Liqing Ph.D
Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, Yunnan 666303, China
E-mail: shalq@xtbg.ac.cn
