Tobias Scholz
BG Biogeosciences
The 2021 Virtual Outstanding Student and PhD candidate Presentation (vOSPP) Award is awarded to Tobias Scholz for the poster/PICO entitled:
Drought years of 2018 and 2019 affect CO2 balance of urban forest ecosystems in the Ruhr Metropolitan Region (Germany) differently (Scholz, T.; Weihermüller, L.; Schmitt, T.)
Click here to download the poster/PICO file.
Tobias Scholz is a PhD student at the Landscape Ecology & Biogeography working group (Geographical Institute) at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany, under his supervisors Prof. Dr. Thomas Schmitt and PD Dr. Lutz Weihermüller (IBG-3 Agrosphere, Forschungszentrum Jülich). His research focuses on the phytodiversity and the ecosystem service provision of urban forest ecosystems.
The awarded vPICO presents CO2 balances of eleven urban forest stands located in the Ruhr Metropolitan Region (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany). CO2 balances were measured and modelled for the drought years 2018 and 2019, considering carbon uptake by tree growth, carbon translocation by litterfall, and carbon release by soil respiration.
The two-years drought affected the CO2 balances differently. On the one hand, forests on anthropogenic soils with a shallow effective rooting zone, low soil carbon content, and low plant available water drastically decreased their CO2 sequestration in the second drought year. Two sites even turned from carbon sinks in 2018 to carbon sources in 2019. On the other hand, forests on native soils with a deep effective rooting zone, large soil carbon content, and large amount of plant available water remained their CO2 sequestration relatively constant. In view of climate change, those findings have implications for urban forestry: urban forests on unfavorable anthropogenic soils were more vulnerable against droughts compared to urban forests on native soils which were more resilient during the investigated drought years.