You are here
Harvard Forest REU Symposium Abstract 2022
- Title: Controls on Carbon Sequestration: From Climate to Atmospheric Deposition
- Author: Jocelyn Christina Fahlen (Columbia University in the City of New York)
- Abstract:
Temperate forests play an important role in the global carbon cycle as a net annual sink through carbon uptake and sequestration. However, temperate forests have varied in their ability to sequester carbon. Therefore it is crucial to understand the future potential of northeastern hardwood forests as carbon sinks. Remote sensing products are effective tools to monitor phenology, quantity, and activity of vegetation, and can be used to understand forest carbon capture. To further explore possible controls on carbon capture and remotely sensed metrics, we performed a series of univariate linear regression to determine whether factors like climate, temperature, and atmospheric deposition are significantly related to forest carbon capture. Throughout the course of the study, we found that the previous five years of atmospheric deposition of total N, SO42+, Mg2+, and Ca2+ exhibits a positive relationship with net ecosystem exchange. Annual deposition flux of Mg2+, K+, Cl-, and Na+ exhibited a strong relationship with Max EVI2, and annual N in NH4+ deposition exhibited a strong relationship to EVI2 area under the curve. Further analysis as to why annual nutrient deposition correlated strongly to remotely sensed metrics is needed to understand the impact of annual nutrient flux on forest greenness. Ultimately, this study contributes to remote sensing analyses, which are becoming an important aspect of ecological research as more satellite data are available for analysis purposes. This study will contribute to our understanding of remotely sensed metrics like EVI2, which hold great potential for future ecological research relating to forest productivity.
- Research Category: Forest-Atmosphere Exchange
