top of page
Forest Hydrology & Soils Laboratory
Investigating Water and Nutrient Cycles in Forest Ecosystems
Climate Change Mitigation Assessment of Conservation Reserve Program Practices with Trees
Southeastern forests exhibit high productivity and CRP tree plantings in the region have the potential to sequester significant amounts of carbon as well as providing co-benefits. In this project, we will monitor and assess CRP tree plantations across the Major Land Resource Areas in the southeastern US collecting forest inventory data integrated with terrestrial LiDAR, high resolution point dendrometer recordings and allometric models to improve estimates of carbon sequestration in aboveground biomass. We will measure belowground soil pools and soil greenhouse gas fluxes to calibrate key parameters in the DayCent model to estimate climate change mitigation benefits of this systems. We will also quantify wildlife co-benefits of CRP tree plantings and develop improvements to the harvest wood products module in COMET-farm.
Collaborators: Austin Himes (MSU), Jia Yang (OSU), Joshua Granger (MSU), Krishna Poudel (MSU), Adam Polinko (MSU), Mark McConnell (MSU), Heidi Renninger (MSU), Dawn Lemke (Alabama A&M), Troy Bowman (Alabama A&M)
Funding: USDA-NRCS
bottom of page