Linking belowground carbon with LiDAR

Carbon (C) circulates naturally among the terrestrial biosphere, atmosphere and oceans. Growing trees and other vegetation capture CO2 from the atmosphere by the photosynthesis. The C balance of a forest varies greatly during stand development and is thus dependent on forest management practice.Almost 10% of the atmosphere?s CO2 passes through the soil annually. This transfer process is important because the soil C pool is expected to show a strong response to climate change. Our knowledge of the large s oil reservoir of C is very limited. We know less about the large belowground C storage than the limited amount of C above ground. Carbon stored belowground can be characterized by large heterogeneity, both in biochemical attributes and spatial distributio n. To understand the C dynamics in a forest ecosystem it is necessary to disclose and quantify this heterogeneity. Research results shows that the relationship between the photosynthesis in the aboveground biomass and the biological activity in the soil c ommunity is much more directly linked to each other than believed before. As there is an increased international interest in C accounting in forest ecosystems, there is a need for efficient methods to estimate the above- as well as the below-ground biomas s components of the trees over large areas. Remote sensing has been a key technology involved in existing efforts to monitor C storage and fluxes. One of these instruments for remote sensing is LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging). LiDAR directly measure t he vertical structure of forests. That means we can derive several variables from the data, like the canopy size, shape and geographical positions. all the way down to single tree level. In this project LiDAR and fieldwork will be used to give a detailed description of the spatial configuration of the living biomass in the forest ecosystem. The project will in the next step also study the relationship between the aboveground biomass and belowground C.