PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #42: Carbon Storage.
Thursday, August 9, 2001. Presentation from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM. Exhibition Hall
146
The total store of organic carbon in the soil of pine ecosystems in Northern and Central Europe.
DEGORSKI, MAREK1, 1
ABSTRACT- Spodosols are among the zonal soils in the boreal and sub-boreal climatic and vegetational belt. They are developed on lighter lithological material and their presence is associated with regions in which precipitation prevails over evapotranspiration, as well as with acidophilous habitats - most often pine and mixed/pine forests. Their share of total soil cover in Northern and Central Europe ranges between the 39.7% noted on the Central European Lowland and the more than 75% observed in Finland. Such a major occurrence of these soils among those in the studied area of Europe combined with the fact that 2/3 of the stores of carbon are found in the soil organic matter of forest ecosystems to form a premise upon which to define the aims of the present study. Thus, work was carried out with a view to determining the reserves and density of organic carbon in the spodosol soils of pine and mixed/pine forests. The research was carried out at 39 sites distributed between 12.26 - 32.36 deg E and 50.21 - 70.09 deg N. The following determinations were made: organic carbon (Corg), by way of Alten's method in the ectohumus horizons and a modified version of Tiurin's method in mineral horizons;the density by volume of organic carbon (DC). The soils studied showed great variability when it came to the reserves of organic carbon determined for 1 sq. m areas in the organic horizon and mineral horizons to a depth of 100 cm. In the case of podsolic soils they were ranging between 9.7 kg in Brandenburg and 23.5 kg in Finland. In turn, rusty podsolic soils had only 5.4 kg, with the range being from 9.2 kg in eastern Belarus to 14.6 kg in the Eastern Baltic Lakelands. The probable reason behind the much more limited differences noted for rusty podsolic soils is their more limited territorial extent within the study area, and at the same time the very homogeneous climatic and vegetational conditions in which they occur. Analysis of the spatial distribution of reserves of organic carbon in podsolic and rusty podsolic soils provided a basis for the identification of geographical regions differing in this respect in a statistically-significant manner. There were shown to be 5 such regions in the case of podsolic soils and 4 for rusty podsols. These results point to the climatic and vegetational conditioning of reserves of organic carbon where soil is of the same genetic type.
KEY WORDS: carbon storage, Spodosols, spatial variability, pine ecosystems