Carbon stocks and carbon fractions in the organic layer (F + H) of forest soil

• Main Authors: Sari Hilli, Sari Stark, Maija Salemaa, John Derome
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Arctic; Climate change
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.611.2186; http://www.metla.fi/ohjelma/hms/seminar2006/hms-postabst-hilli2.pdf

Recent studies have demonstrated that there is a clear link between climatic variability and the carbon balance in boreal and temporal forest ecosystems and soils (Qualls et al. 2003, Guo et al. 2005). The interaction between climate warming and carbon pools in forest soils at high latitudes may be important because climate change is expected to be the greatest in northern boreal and especially sub-Arctic and Arctic regions (Vucetich et al. 1999). The formation of relatively inert humic substances may have an influence on the processes controlling the recycling of soil carbon back to the atmosphere (Qualls et al. 2003). The build up of soil organic matter (SOM) depends on the amount of litter produced, the chemical composition of the litter, the rate of decomposition and the mechanisms controlling it, and climatic factors (Berg et al. 1995, Berg et al. 2001, Vejre et al. 2003). When the same kind of vegetation is growing for a long time on the same site, a state of equilibrium is reached between the input of litter and its rate of decomposition in the soil. This leads to the formation of an organic layer containing an amount of organic matter that is relatively typical of the site in question (Evans et