Project director
Senior researcher I Dr. Any Mary Petrițan
The purpose of the project
The aim of this study is to quantify above- and below-ground biomass, net primary production and carbon content in different plant compartments as well as from different depths in the soil in a virgin mixed beech-fir forest.
Project activities:
Petru to achieve the proposed goal, 10 beech trees and 10 fir trees will be harvested from different categories of diameters, covering all diameter ranges, with the aim of developing allometric equations necessary for the calculation of total biomass. Trunk biomass will be calculated as the product of wood density and trunk volume. To estimate the biomass of twigs and foliage, the grasping diameter of the twigs will be measured and all leaves/needles will be collected. All these plant parts will be dried in an oven and weighed.
For the biomass of thick roots, the stumps will be excavated, and for the fine ones, samples will be taken with a metal probe. Allometric relationships will be established between the biomass of the trunk, branches, foliage, reproductive organs, stump, thick roots and several tree characteristics: diameter at 1.30 m, crown height and length. At the beginning of 2018, an inventory of living trees will be carried out. The data resulting from the inventory, together with the allometric equations, will be used to calculate the above- and below-ground biomass for the entire tree. net primary production will be calculated for a growing season as the difference between the biomass at the beginning and the end of the growing season.
The amount of C will be determined at different levels of the forest: soil, litter and for each part of the plant. To determine the C content of the plant material, parts of the tree will be sampled: thick and fine roots, trunk, branches, leaves.
The results of this project will provide valuable data on above- and below-ground biomass, but also on the amount of C that is stored in plant organs, litter, soil in a virgin mixed forest.
The project team
Senior researcher I Dr. Any Mary Petrițan – Director proiect
Junior researcher Dr. Cosmin Ion Bragă -Postdoctorand
Junior researcher Dr. Vlad Emil Crișan -Tânăr cercetător
Junior researcher Dr. Raluca Elena Enescu -Postdoctorand
Junior researcher Dr. Elena Mihaela Deleanu -Postdoctorand
Eng. Victor Vasile Mihăilă – Postgraduate student
COLLABORATORS:
Prof. Dr. Jorge Curiel Yuste
Dr. Olivier Bouriaud
Eng. Gheorghe Ștefan
Dr. Eng. Ion Cătălin Petrițan
Project dissemination
ISI articles:
- Cailleret M, Dakos V, Jansen S, Robert E M R, Aakala T, Amoroso MM, Antos JA, Bigler C, Bugmann H, ….Petritan AM, …, Martínez-Vilalta J. 2018. “Early-warning signals of individual tree mortality based on annual radial growth”. Frontiers in Plant Science, 9, 1964. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.01964
- Gut, U., Árvai, M., Bijak, S., Camarero, J.J., Cedro, A., Cruz-García, R., Garamszegi, B., Hacket-Pain, A., Hevia, A., Huang, W., … Petritan A.M, … and Isaac-Renton, M., 2019. No systematic effects of sampling direction on climate-growth relationships in a large-scale, multi-species tree-ring data set. Dendrochronologia, 57, p.125624. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1125786519300876
- Yuste, J.C., Flores-Rentería, D., García-Angulo, D., Hereş, A.M., Bragă, C., Petritan, A.M. and Petritan, I.C., 2019. Cascading effects associated with climate-change-induced conifer mortality in mountain temperate forests result in hot-spots of soil CO2 emissions. Soil Biology and Biochemistry, 133, pp.50-59. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038071719300574
- Petritan IC, Mihăilă VV, Bragă CI, Boura M, Vasile D, Petritan AM. 2020. Litterfall production and leaf area index in a virgin european beech (Fagus sylvatica L.)–silver fir (Abies alba mill.) forest. Dendrobiology 83, 75–84. http://dx.doi.org/10.12657/denbio.083.008
- Dutcă I, Zianis D, Petritan IC, Bragă CI, Stefan G, Yuste JC, Petritan AM. 2020. Allometric biomass models for European beech and silver fir: testing approaches to minimize the demand for site-specific biomass observations. Forests 11, 1136. https://doi.org/10.3390/f11111136
Summer school participation:
Participation at “CARSEQ”: Carbon Sequestration in Forest Ecosystems – SwissForestLab and NFZ summer school, organized by Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, WSL, Elveția,19-24 august 2018 of Victor-Vasile Mihaila.
Conference participants:
- Braga C, Petritan IC, Vasile D, Enescu R, Scarlatescu V, Petritan AM. 2018. Soil respiration in a virgin and former virgin beech-silver fir forest of Southern Carpathians at “International Conference „Forest Science for a Sustainable Forestry and Human Wellbeing in a Changing World – INCDS „Marin Drãcea” 85 Years of Activity, Centenary of The Great Union in 1918”, September 18th-21th 2018. (poster)
- Braga C, Petritan IC, Crisan V., Vasile D, Enescu R, Scarlatescu V, Mihaila V-V, Dutca I, Petritan AM. 2018. Comparison between a virgin beech-silver fir forest and a managed forest from point of view of soil CO2 flux la International Scientific Symposium „Modern agriculture – Achivements and Perspectives”, – Moldova State Agrarian University, 4th-6th October, Chisinau . (poster)
- Petritan AM, Mihaila V-V, Dumitru-Dobre C, Crisan V, Barti M, Petritan IC. 2018. Above- and belowground biomass and carbon content in a beech-silver fir mixed virgin forest. International Symposium Forest and Sustainable Development, Brașov, Romania 25-27 October, 2018. (poster)
- Zang C, Buras a, Hacket-Pain A, Trotsiuk V, Baittinger C, Battipaglia G, Biondi F, Bonde N, Cada V, Camarero JJ, …., Petritan IC, Petritan AM, … Weigel R, Wilmking M, Zlatanov T. The potential of ecologically focused tree-ring networks for benchmarking vegetation models. Book of Abracts: http://www.trace2019.com/abstract.pdf. TRACE conference 2019 “Tree-rings in archaeology, climatology and ecology”, 7-11 mai 2019, San Leucio-Caserta, Italy. (poster)
- Mihaila VV, Boura M, Braga C, Stefan G, Crisan V, Dumitru-Dobre C, Petritan IC, Petritan AM. 2019. Leaf area index based on hemispherical photos and leaf-litter collection and its relations with the environmental factors in a virgin Silver fir-Beech forest from Southern Carphatians (Romania). International WSL conference “Temperate and boreal primeval forests in the face of global change”, 2-4 September 2019, Lviv, Ukraine. (oral presentation)
- Mihaila VV, Curiel Yuste J, Stefan G, Petritan IC, Braga C, Crisan V., Dumitru-Dobre C., Petritan AM. 2019. Above- and belowground tree biomass allometry and partitioning for beech, in a primeval forest in the central Carpathian Mountains. The 49th Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of Germany, Austria and Switzerland (Science meets practice GFoe 2019), Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität, Münster 9 – 13 September 2019, Germania. (oral presentation)
- Mihaila VV, Boura M, Curiel Yuste J, Braga C, Stefan G, Crisan V, Dumitru-Dobre C, Petritan IC, Petritan AM. Comparison of two methods of leaf area index estimation and the influence of environmental factors on it in a virgin beech-fir forest. Anniversary conference on the occasion of the 90th birthday of Mr. Prof. Dr.Eng. Nicolae Donita, USAMVBT, Timisoara, 15 Noiembrie 2019. (poster)
- Dutcă I, Mihailă VV, Petritan IC, Ștefan G, Bragă CI, Yuste J C, Petritan AM. Improving the Local Calibration of Allometric Biomass Models. 9th international symposium forest and sustainable development Brașov, România, 16 october 2020 (poster).