Carbon (C) storage in residual live lodgepole pine trees in northern BC at Kennedy Siding was measured 11 and 12 years after a severe mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic. Kennedy Siding eddy covariance (EC) measurements showed that the net ecosystem productivity (NEP) was quick to recover C sink status. In this study, measurements of heights and diameters of 160 residual live lodgepole pine trees and a subset of 60 tree cores were used to calculate residual tree stem C-storage in 2017 and 2018 (36.01 and 26.71 g C m-2 yr-1 respectively). Dendrochronology analyses indicated that residual pine trees released on average 392% in the decade following versus the decade prior to MPB-attack. Stem C-storage was strongly and positively correlated with ECNEP measurements (R2=0.77) and percent downed canopy trees (R2=0.837), suggesting that growth release of residual trees was likely driven by improvements in resources (e.g. light, moisture, nutrient).
