title: Increasing active biomass carbon may lead to a breakdown of mature forest equilibrium.
abstract: The finding that mature forest ecosystems increase carbon in woody tissues and mineral soils indicates that the original equilibriums are being pushed to a higher state. The final driving forces will probably be increasing CO2 and nitrogen deposition, global warming, and changes to precipitation patterns. However, which part of a mature forest bears the direct impacts of environmental changes and reactivates the balanced ecosystem processes remains unclear. Here, we investigated the living biomass of mature forests in the tropical and subtropical biomes in China and found that active organs and small individuals have accumulated carbon at a rate of 203 kg C ha(-1) yr(-1) in recent decades, whereas the woody tissues did not display carbon accumulation with statistical significance. Our findings indicate that the increased labile plant inputs may have shifted mature forests from their previous equilibrium and caused them to enter a new non-equilibrium state.
authors.affiliation: 1] South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, China [2] University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, China.
authors.forename: Yin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, China.
authors.forename: Guoyi
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, China.
authors.forename: Qianmei
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, China.
authors.forename: Wantong
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou 510650, China.
authors.forename: Shizhong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D018533:Biomass; D002244:Carbon; D002681:China; D017753:Ecosystem; D065928:Forests; D005843:Geography; D062211:Spatio-Temporal Analysis
chemical_list: D002244:Carbon