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Comparative Productivity of Forest and Grass Ecosystems

  • Ecological Problems
  • Published:
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Abstract

Among the land-dominated natural formations, like forests and grasslands, the attention of humanity is drawn at present primarily to the former. It is the forests of temperate and tropical zones that are supposed to play an important role in the regulation of biosphere processes on Earth, including the current climate. This almost completely ignores the importance of herbaceous systems widely represented by steppes and meadows. The overwhelming superiority of forests over grass ecosystems in productivity and phytomass stock is recognized. A comparative analysis of production estimates (t/ha/year) and of organic material stocks (t/ha) in the underground and aboveground parts of herbaceous and forest ecosystems accumulated in the scientific literature has shown that meadows and steppes are not inferior (and often even superior) to forests both in the mass of accumulated organic matter and in annual growth of phytomass. The only difference is that organic production is localized in forest communities mainly in the aboveground part as considerable wood (trunk) mass while it is equally or more shifted underground in herbaceous communities in the form of soil organic matter. The leaf (photosynthesizing) masses of herbaceous and forest communities are close in quantity, respectively, and their synthesis of organic products and carbon exchange with the atmosphere are also similar. The author argues that the steppe and meadow ecosystems do not lag behind forests in organic mass and participation in biosphere processes, thus deserving no less effort for their preservation.

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Notes

  1. LAI is the leaf area index defined as the one-sided green leaf area per unit ground surface area (m2 m–2; ha ha–1).

  2. PAR (Photosynthetically Active Radiation) designates the spectral range (wave band) of solar radiation that photosynthetic organisms are able to use in the process of photosynthesis.

  3. We made an updated calculation of the aboveground production values [26] based on the author’s initial data [22], so the value of annual production in our calculation (30.6 t/ha) differs from the original value in the source (22.8 t/ha).

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  1. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

    B. D. Abaturov

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Translated by D. Sventsitsky

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Boris Danilovich Abaturov, Dr. Sci. (Biol.), is Chief Researcher at Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences.

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Abaturov, B.D. Comparative Productivity of Forest and Grass Ecosystems. Her. Russ. Acad. Sci. 93, 127–134 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1019331623010082

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