Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Forest Ecosystems

Forests capture the primary greenhouse gas (GHG), carbon dioxide (CO2), from the atmosphere and are, therefore, considered an important weapon to fight climate change. However, recent studies found significant fluxes of other GHGs, namely methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), from forest trees and soils, resulting in large uncertainties in the overall forest GHG budget at the ecosystem level. Given that CH4 and N2O are ~30 and 300 times more effective, respectively, in warming the atmosphere than CO2 over a 100-year period, even minor emissions of these gases could undermine the radiative cooling effect of CO2 uptake by forests. Therefore, to accurately evaluate the role of forests in climate change mitigation, it is important to have a better understanding of the magnitudes, variations and controls of all GHG fluxes from different forest ecosystems of various regions.

This Research Topic aims to cover the current state of research regarding all processes associated with CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes in forest ecosystems and their biotic or abiotic drivers at any temporal (e.g., short campaigns, long-term observations or model forecasts) and spatial scale (e.g., microbes, soil, trees, ecosystems, regions or continents). We welcome outstanding manuscripts in forms of original research, method advances, opinions and reviews.
Studies in, but not limited to, the following areas are encouraged to submit:

• Manipulative experiments that explore the environmental stress/control on GHG fluxes
• Ecosystem level GHG budget accounting for all CO2, CH4 and N2O fluxes
• Plot level GHG flux observations from forest trees, soils, streams, etc.
• GHG-related radiative forcing or global warming potential from forests
• Forest GHG flux modelling
• GHG flux changes in response to extreme events
• Long-trend prediction of forest GHG fluxes
• Upscaling of in-situ GHG flux observations