CentForCSink - Die Effekte von vergange...

Temperate forests have been identified as major carbon (C) sinks to the
atmosphere, mitigating climate change. However, these forests are also
subject to climate change, and have been strongly altered by humans in
the past. CentForCSink aims to study the effects of 20th century legacies (i.e. land use, climate and disturbances) on the current C sink
of a temperate forest landscape (National Park Kalkalpen) and its future
trajectories in the 21st century. The project team addresses these
questions using models and empirical data, upscaling forest C dynamics
from the plot to the catchment and the regional scale.
CentForCSink is a joint project together with the Environment Agency
Austria - UBA, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences -
BOKU, and the Austrian Research Centre for Forests - BFW. The research design combines four nested work-packages: Two work-packages focus on the plot- and catchment level at the LTER-Site Zöbelboden. Two work-packages will cooperate in empirically describing and modelling both the 20th century land-use history and the future development on landscape level.
Among these work-packages, WP3 "Historical Land-use and Disturbance
Regimes" is being carried out at the Department of Social Ecology.
Besides providing historical data for modelling the past and future
C-trajectories, this work-package also analyses the temporal structure
of forest use and disturbance throughout the historical period of
reference (app. 130 years from 1880 to 2010) by means of Geometric Data Analysis. The result of this analysis will also contribute to
environmental history as a standalone result.