Carbon in the Shifting Mosaics of Forest Landscapes

In forest ecosystems, succession refers to the gradual replacement of one population/community of trees and various ground vegetation species by another population/community in a process that inclines toward increasing complexity of habitats and diversity of organisms. At the landscape scale, the separate forest stands (or patches, or pieces of landscape mosaic) shift from one developmental phase to another. During the shift, separate mosaic pieces show structural differentiation based on the life cycle of trees. Natural disturbance and comparable forestry management measures tend to reduce pre-disturbance carbon stocks (legacy carbon) from the previous production cycle. Management and harvest operations affect carbon stocks in trees and ground vegetation, as well as carbon in soil litter and detritus. Concurrently, soil carbon increases in litterfall and is lost through decay and respiration in soil litter and detritus. In reforested clear-cut areas, carbon loss decreases until the uptake of carbon rises again in the recovering ground vegetation and growth of seedlings, thus compensating the carbon lost from soil after clear cutting and contributing to the recovery of the ecosystem carbon balance.