Quantifying the effect of sporadic forest disturbances on measured biomass change in forest plots
Yadvinder
Singh
Malhi, Oxford University Centre for the Environment, ymalhi@ed.ac.uk
(Presenting)
Recent forest plot studies have suggested that old-growth forests in general are undergoing a net increase in biomass. However, there has been some debate as to the bias introduced by selective sampling of the natural disturbance-recovery regime of forests. I explore the nature of this bias with a simple quantitative model of disturbance and recovery. The critical uncertainties in our knowledge are highlighted. Finally, the model is used to estimate the probability that selective sampling of stochastic disturbance-recovery regime could explain the net biomass increment in mature Amazonian forests that has been observed by the RAINFOR project.