Long-term effects of commercial harvest exclusion on forest structure and aboveground biomass in the Great Xing'an Mountains, China

Boreal forests retain larger carbon reserves than other biomes. The boreal forests of China are in the Great Xing’an Mountains region, which contains approximately 24% -31% of the total forest carbon storage in China, and thus plays an important role in maintaining the national carbon balance. Timber harvest is a major anthropogenic disturbance in boreal forests, affecting forest structure and aboveground forest biomass over the long term. High-intensity harvest has resulted in simplification and homogenization of forest structure and composition in the past. Therefore, the Natural Forest Conservation Policy and the Commercial Harvest Exclusion Policy were successively implemented in 2000 and 2014, respectively, to balance ecological restoration and timber supply. The objective of this study was to investigate long-term effects of Commercial Harvest Exclusion on the structure and biomass of a boreal forest landscape in northeastern China. To do this, we simulated the effects of Natural Forest Conservation and Commercial Harvest Exclusion on forest structure and biomass using a spatially explicit forest landscape model( LANDIS PRO). We initialized the model using forest inventory data( second and third tier data from 2000) and conducted simulations for the Great Xing’an Mountains from 2000 to 2100. Our results suggested that 1) density and basal area between the initialized modeling results and forest inventory data in2000 were consistent( P