Carbon balance along the Northeast China Transect (NECT-IGBP)

Abstract The Northeast China Transect (NECT) along a precipitation gradient was used to cal-culate the carbon balance of different vegetation types, land-use practices and temporal scales. NECT consists of mixed coniferous-broadleaved forest ecosystems, meadow steppe ecosystems and typical steppe ecosystems. Analyses of the C budget were carried out with field measurement based on dark enclosed chamber techniques and alkali absorption methods, and the application of the CENTURY model. Results indicated that: (1) soil CO2 flux had a strong diurnal and seasonal variation influenced by grassland type and land-use practices. However, the seasonal variation on soil CO2 fluxes did not show obvious changes between non-grazing and grazing Leymus chinensis dominated grasslands. (2) Hourly soil CO2 fluxes mainly depended on temperature, while daily CO2 fluxes were affected both by temperature and moisture. (3) NPP of the three typical ecosys-tems showed linear relationships with inter-annual precipitation, but total soil carbon of those eco-systems did not. NPP and total soil carbon values decreased westward with decreasing precipita-tion. (4) Model simulation of NPP and total soil carbon showed that mean annual precipitation was the major limiting factor for ecosystem productivity along NECT. (5) Mean annual carbon budget is the largest for the mixed coniferous- broadleaved forest ecosystem (503.2 gC m-2 a−1), followed b