PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 155: Biogeochemistry: Soil Carbon Dynamics
Friday, August 12, 8:00 AM - 11:30 AM, Meeting Room 516 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Land-use legacies and soil carbon dynamics: A regional assessment.
Vadeboncoeur, Matthew*,1, Hamburg, Steven1, 1 Brown University, Providence, RI
ABSTRACT- Current and future ecosystem carbon storage are greatly influenced by human land-use history. These legacies can persist for over a century. Processes of C loss and accumulation occur on very different time scales, so regional carbon dynamics depend on gross turnover of land under human use, rather than net changes in developed area. We are conducting a regional soil C assessment of Grafton County, NH, a 4,000 km2 area that includes much of the White Mountain National Forest. This area encompasses a wide range of commercial and agricultural disturbance histories, and is more than 90% forested today. We have assembled soil C data from quantitative soil pit data in a clearcut chronosequence, an abandoned plowed field chronosequence, and repeat measures on a single clearcut. We are now collecting data from quantitative soil pits in active and abandoned pastures and woodlots. We are also using historical maps and records to construct a spatial database of land-use history for the region. We can then combine generalized C accumulation rate estimates based on intensively studied sites with this broader-scale land-use history database in order to derive estimates of regional C flux over past 150 years.
Key words: soil carbon, quantitiative soil pit, land-use history, northern hardwood forest