Juniper trees are widespread across the southwestern US and their encroachment into former grasslands has been sequestering increasing amounts of carbon into these landscapes but modifying the ecosystems services available.
Partnering with Cameron McIntire, we conducted a study to establish allometric relationships to predict aboveground biomass and sapwood area of Oneseed Juniper (Juniperus monosperma) trees.
We measured the canopy area, stem diameters and height of trees to find out how these measurements predicted key attributes of the biomass and sapwood area across a wide range of tree sizes.
We found that there was a much steeper relationships between stem diameters and biomass then predicted by existing (cupressaceae) family-level, national-scale allometric functions, and that canopy area very strongly predicted aboveground biomass which bodes well for upscaling using optical remote sensing data.
Find out more at Cunliffe et al. (2020) Allometric relationships for predicting aboveground biomass and sapwood area of Oneseed Juniper (Juniperus monosperma) trees. Front. Plant Sci. 11:1-12. DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2020.00094. Download PDF
Andrew Cunliffe 