Development of Integrated Simulator of Water Transport and Plant Growth as an Evaluation Tool of Arid Land Afforestation for CO₂ Fixation

抄録

Carbon sequestration by afforestation of arid land is one of a few effective countermeasures against the carbon dioxide problem. In order to attain net fixation of carbon dioxide, the quantity of carbon dioxide generated by the implementation of afforestation should be less than that fixed by the tree growth by afforestation. As an evaluation tool for afforestation technologies for arid land, we propose an integrated simulator consisting of soil-water transport, transpiration, photosynthesis, and plant growth models. The aim of this approach is to estimate the quantity of the carbon fixed by afforestation. The simulation results on the irrigation and soil-water transport indicated the importance of soil depth for water maintenance. Also, the growth efficiency of photosynthesized carbon for planted trees was estimated by comparing simulation results and experimental data. Although the simulator constructed herein was based on the climatic and land conditions at our experimental site at Sturt Meadows in Western Australia, the structure of this simulator can be used not only for afforestation in our experimental site, but also for other areas with similar conditions.