The South China Botanical Garden reveals the temporal and spatial law of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus retention time in forest ecosystems

The input and output of material elements is not only the need to maintain the operation and development of the ecosystem itself, but also the concrete embodiment
of the realization of ecosystem functions.
Therefore, the retention time of material elements is an important basis for evaluating the structural and functional stability of ecosystems, which is regulated by internal self-organization and external environmental factors
.
Currently, there are few
reports of the retention time of material elements in forest ecosystems.

Under the guidance of Prof.
Yan Junhua and Prof.
Yingping Wang, Dr.
Chen Yang of Dinghushan Station of South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences estimated the retention time of ecosystem carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus retention time and environmental factors based on the survey data of 127 typical forest plots of the China Carbon Special Project and combined with the GOLUM-CNP cycle model
。 It was found that the external environmental factors regulating the retention time of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in forest ecosystems were mainly air temperature (Figure 1), which generally showed a decrease in retention time with the increase of the average minimum temperature (T_min) of the coldest month.

The variation of carbon and phosphorus retention time with T min in temperate forests and subtropical evergreen forests (Figure 2) is related
to the seasonal changes of forest growth in the two climatic zones 。 This study used innovative methods to calculate the carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus retention time of typical forest ecosystems in China for the first time, which is helpful to understand the response of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus turnover in forest ecosystems to environmental factors, and can provide a basis
for research work such as the improvement of carbon-nitrogen cycle model.