Scotland's 17% forested land cover sequesters 10% of Scotland's emissions of greenhouse gases. The expected rise of forested land cover to 25% by the middle of this century make forests an important component of the national carbon budget. This paper presents the carbon exchange measurement methodology, results, and modeling associated with a five-year experiment at a plantation forest in Scotland, UK, as part of a European initiative to develop and verify vegetation carbon-exchange models.We have developed a site specific correction for advective flux loses. While based on ustar corrections, it differs from current approaches in that it includes site topographic effects, corrects existing data instead of replacing it, and applies over the entire diel cycle instead of only during nocturnal periods.Models of soil respiration are compared and reveal the inadequacy of soil state parameterization. A non-rectangular hyperbola model of assimilation is selected to examine the maximum assimilation rate and quantum use efficiency parameters' responses to environmental temperature, vapour pressure, and sky condition. Intra-annual variability is found to be highest in early autumn, linked to a combination of seasonal changes in radiation and phenological changes in canopy quantum yield. Inter-annual variability was low, with less than %5 variation from year to year, and factors driving this variability were not clearly apparent.Over the 5 years of reported measurements, this forest sequestered about 6 tonnes of C per hectare per annum. Photosynthetically active radiation use efficiency of the forest is about 4.2%. Constancy of radiation use efficiency was observed at both diel and annual scales. This constancy depended on the ecosystem's thermal inertia and assimilation/radiation response curve characteristics at diel time scales but depended on thermal inertia and phenological changes in quantum yield at annual time scales.The net carbon uptake rates are consistent with two other flux sites in the British Isles and suggest that the relatively maritime climatology of these areas is highly suitable for the species of trees routinely planted here. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Summary The emission of greenhouse gases has become a very high priority research and environmental policy issue due to their effects on global climate. The knowledge of changes in global atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution is well documented, and the global budgets are reasonably well known. However, even at this scale there are important uncertainties in the budgets, for example, in the case of methane while the main sources and sinks have been identified, temporal changes in the global average concentrations since the early 1990s are not understood. In the absence of a quantitative explanation with appropriate experimental support, it is clear that current knowledge of the causes of changes in the global methane budget is inadequate to predict the effect of changes in specific emission sectors. In developing control strategies to reduce emissions it is necessary to validate national emissions and their spatial disaggregation. The methodology to underpin such a process is at an early stage of development and is not fully implemented in any country, even though target emission reductions have already been announced. Furthermore, the scale of the emission reductions is large (eg of 60% reductions by 2050 relative to 1990 baseline). There is therefore an urgent requirement for measurement based verification processes to support such challenging emission reductions. In this paper we provide the background in greenhouse gas emissions globally and in the UK followed by examples of approaches to validate emissions at the UK scale and within the regions.

We report diurnal variations in (13)C discrimination ((13)Delta) of Picea sitchensis (Bong.) Carr. branches measured in the field using a branch chamber technique. The observations were compared to predicted (13)Delta based on concurrent measurements of branch gas exchange. Observed (13)Delta values were described well by the classical model of (13)Delta including isotope effects during photorespiration, day respiration and CO(2) transfer through a series of resistances to the sites of carboxylation. A simplified linear of model (13)Delta did not capture the observed diurnal variability. At dawn and dusk, we measured very high (13)Delta values that were not predicted by either of the said models. Exploring the sensitivity of (13)Delta to possible respiratory isotope effects, we conclude that isotopic disequilibria between the gross fluxes of photosynthesis and day respiration can explain the high observed (13)Delta values during net photosynthetic gas exchange. Based on the classical model, a revised formulation incorporating an isotopically distinct substrate for day respiration was able to account well for the high observed dawn and dusk (13)Delta values.

Net CO2 exchange estimated using eddy covariance and relaxed eddy accumulation indicated that evergreen pine upland and deciduous cypress wetland ecosystems in north-central Florida had similar apparent light compensation points during the growing season (125 vs. 150 μmol PPFD·m−2·s−1), but that maximum rates at 1800 μmol PPFD·m−2·s−1 at the cypress ecosystem were only 59% of those at the pine ecosystem (8.9 vs. 15.2 μmol CO2·m−2·s−1). During both the summer and winter months at the pine ecosystem, net CO2 exchange in the daytime was a curvilinear function of PPFD, with no significant seasonal differences in slope or intercept. In contrast, net CO2 exchange at the cypress ecosystem was minimal during the daytime in the winter. Net CO2 exchange during the nighttime was an exponential function of air temperature at both sites, with Q10 values of 2.0 and 1.9 for the pine and cypress ecosystems, respectively. Lower nighttime fluxes of CO2 occurred at the cypress ecosystem across the entire temperature range. Both of these relatively sparse canopies stored CO2 during stable atmospheric conditions. Mean maximum net CO2 exchange during the daytime and mean nighttime net CO2 exchange for these ecosystems were highly contrasting, and together resulted in a relatively low rate of annual carbon accumulation in the wetland when compared to the aggrading pine ecosystem. However, values reported here are within the ranges of values for other boreal, temperate, and tropical forest ecosystems.

The efflux of CO2 from the soil surface can vary markedly in magnitude both in time and space and its correct determination is crucial in many ecological studies. In this paper, we report results of field measurements, using an open-top dynamic chamber, of soil CO2 efflux in a mature Florida slash pine (Pinus elliottii Engelm. var.elliottii) plantation. The daily average efflux was 0.217 mg CO2 m-2s-1 in the autumn and 0.087 mg CO2 m-2s-1 in the winter. Soil temperature, which accounts for most of the temporal variability in CO2 efflux, is by far the most influential factor controlling soil respiration rate and its temporal variation. The CO2 efflux in the slash pine plantation is highly spatially variable and effluxes from the soil under palmetto is significantly higher than that from the open floor. The CO2 efflux generally increases with increase in soil fine root biomass, litter and humus amount on the forest floor but is inversely related to the amount of organic matter in the mineral soil. The spatial variation in CO2 efflux can be well characterised by a simple multiple regression model incorporating live and dead biomass and soil total porosity as predictor variables. Understorey plants, mostly Serenoa repens, are an important component of the C cycle and the major contributor to the spatial heterogeneity of soil CO2 efflux. The influence of understorey plants on soil respiration is probably via two approaches: increasing litterfall and root metabolism, both consequently stimulating microbial activity in the mineral soil.