Effect of forest management on the formation and stability of phytolith and PhytOC in forest ecosystem

Forest ecosystem has a high carbon sequestration capacity and plays a crucial role in maintaining global carbon balance and climate change. Phytolith-occluded carbon (PhytOC), a promising long-term biogeochemical carbon sequestration mechanism, has attracted more attentions in the global carbon cycle and the regulation of atmospheric CO₂. Therefore, it is of practical significance to investigate the PhytOC accumulation in forest ecosystems. Previous studies have mostly focused on the estimation of the content and storage of PhytOC, while there were still few studies on how the management practices affect the PhytOC content. Here, this study focused on the effects of four management practices (compound fertilization, silicon fertilization, cut and control) on the increase of phytolith and PhytOC in Moso bamboo forests. We found that silicon fertilization had a greater potential to significantly promote the capacity of carbon sequestration in Moso bamboo forests. this finding positively corresponds recent studies that the application of silicon fertilizers (e.g., biochar) increase the Si uptake¹ to promote phytolith accumulation and its PhytOC sequestration in the plant-soil system². Of course, the above-mentioned document² also had their own shortcomings, i.e., the experimental research time was not long, lacking long-term follow-up trial and the bamboo forest parts were also limited, so that the test results lack certain reliability. We have set up a long-term experiment plot to study the effects of silicon fertilizer on the formation and stability of phytolith and PhytOC in Moso bamboo forests. But anyway, different forest management practices, especially the application of high-efficiency silicon-rich fertilizers¹, may be an effective way to increase the phytolith and PhytOC storage in forest ecosystems, and thereby improve the long-term CO₂ sequestration capacity of forest ecosystems. Research in this study provides a good "forest plan" to achieve their national voluntary emission reduction commitments and achieves carbon neutrality goals for all over the world.

Refences:

¹Li et al., 2019. Plant and soil, 438(1-2), pp.187-203.

²Huang et al., 2020, Science of The Total Environment, 715, p.136846.