Forest Soils Articles
-
Forest Soil Carbon Flux Measurement and Applications
Measuring forest soil carbon flux gives an insight into the health of forest ecosystems and provides feedback on the effects of global warming. This article outlines how soil CO2 efflux is determined and the applications of soil carbon flux research.The Earth’s carbon cycle maintains a steady balance of carbon in the atmosphere that supports plant and animal life. In recent years, concerns about ...
-
Use of Profile Probes saves time and money for EU funded FutMon forest monitoring team - case Study
FutMon project Delta‐T Profile Probes have been installed at four sites across the U.K. to provide soil moisture data as part of FutMon, an EU Life+ project. The aim of FutMon is to create a Europe‐ wide long term forest monitoring system. The FutMon partner organisation in the UK is Forest Research (Centre for Forestry and Climate Change). The data required for FutMon are being ...
-
Impact of Snow on Soil Greenhouse Gases
Spring is finally in the air, and while the thermometers are slowly but steadily rising, we wanted to explore the impacts of the exceptionally snowy winter on the soil greenhouse gas emissions. For this post, we interviewed a researcher, Boris Tupek, who is based in Luke, the Natural Resources Institute Finland. Tupek’s research specializes in greenhouse gases, including measuring and ...
-
Observations and snow model simulations of winter energy balance terms within and between different coniferous forests in southern boreal Finland
Variation of canopy properties between different forest types is seldom taken into account in hydrological and climate models, and consideration of variation inside a forest is normally omitted. In this work, three data sets on near surface energy balance terms (incoming shortwave and longwave radiation; air and snow–soil interface temperatures) were collected in the southern boreal ...
-
Benefits of minimum tillage case study
In Hungary, the MARGINS project is being conducted near Lake Balaton - the largest lake in Central Europe. The lake is renowned for its beauty and wildlife. Its surrounding hilly landscape is covered with rich brown forest soil. This landscape is, however, prone to soil erosion -in particular, rills develop when soil is weakened by excessive tillage and exposed to intense rainstorms. If not ...
By Syngenta
-
Aspect and soil textural controls on snowmelt runoff on forested Boreal Plain hillslopes
Plot studies were conducted on a jack pine forest with sandy soil and aspen forests with sandy and loam soils to examine the controls of slope aspect, soil texture and fall soil moisture content on near-surface snowmelt runoff and infiltration. It was hypothesized that near-surface runoff would be greater from north-facing slopes on loam soils with increased fall soil moisture content. Fall soil ...
-
Effect of charcoal quantity on microbial biomass and activity in temperate soils
Wildfire-produced charcoal is a common component of soils, affecting a range of important abiotic and biotic soil processes. Our ability to predict the effects of charcoal addition to soil is currently limited, however, by our understanding of how charcoal affects the soil microbial community mediating many of these processes. This study sought to improve our understanding of the relationship ...
-
Abiotic nitrate retention in agroecosystems and a forest soil
Agricultural ecosystems are the primary source of nitrate (NO3–) pollution in many watersheds. We used a laboratory 15N tracer study with live and gamma irradiated soils to examine the role of land management in abiotic retention of NO3– in three agroecosytems and a forest soil. Nitrogen retention was defined as the quantity of 15N that remained in soil following salt extractions. Land management ...
-
Recreating a functioning forest soil in reclaimed oil sands in Northern Alberta: an approach for measuring success in ecological restoration
During oil-sands mining all vegetation, soil, overburden, and oil sand is removed, leaving pits several kilometers wide and up to 100 m deep. These pits are reclaimed through a variety of treatments using subsoil or a mixed peat-mineral soil cap. Using nonmetric multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis of measurements of ecosystem function, reclamation treatments of several age classes were ...
-
Could food shortages bring down civilization?
One of the toughest things for people to do is to anticipate sudden change. Typically we project the future by extrapolating from trends in the past. Much of the time this approach works well. But sometimes it fails spectacularly, and people are simply blindsided by events such as today’s economic crisis. For most of us, the idea that civilization itself could disintegrate probably seems ...
-
Molecular-scale characterization of hot-water-extractable organic matter in organic horizons of a forest soil
Hot-water-extractable organic matter (HWEOM) has been shown to be highly correlated with microbial biomass in forest soils. We conducted elemental and 13C solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopic analyses to assess the composition and structural chemistry of HWEOM and its variations with soil depth within O horizons in a forest site in New Hampshire. The HWEOM fraction exhibited a ...
-
The role of natural purified humic acids in modifying Mercury accessibility in water and soil
Received for publication April 17, 2008. Contamination of soils with mercury can be a serious problem. It can be mobilized or stabilized by humic substances (HS) containing binding sites with reduced sulfur that can have different binding capacities for CH3Hg+ and for Hg2+. In this work we investigated the influence of different humic acids (HAs, extracted from lignite, compost, and forest soil) ...
-
Leaching of Nitrogen and Phenolics from wood waste and co-composts used for road rehabilitation
Rehabilitation and reforestation of disused forest roads and landings can be facilitated by the incorporation of organic matter. The British Columbia forest industry creates residual woody materials, but they are nutrient poor and may leach phenolic compounds. We assessed the potential for wood wastes (chipped cedar wood waste, sort-yard waste, hogfuel) and co-composts with shellfish waste or ...
-
Mass balance of Cadmium in two contrasting oak forest ecosystems
The mass balance of cadmium in forest ecosystems was parameterized. Soil pH is the main variable controlling retention of Cd in the soil and, hence, determines whether Cd is leached from the system or not. However the extent to which root uptake and biomass accumulation of Cd, or the return of Cd to the soil as internal cycling, influences forest Cd balances is unknown. Also unknown is whether ...
-
Dynamics of atmospheric nitrogen deposition in a temperate calcareous forest soil
In temperate forest ecosystems, soil acts as a major sink for atmospheric N deposition. A 15N labeling experiment in a hardwood forest on calcareous fluvisol was performed to study the processes involved. Low amounts of ammonium (15NH4+) or nitrate (15NO3–) were added to small plots. Soil samples were taken after periods ranging from 1 h to 1 yr. After 1 d, the litter layer retained approximately ...
-
Quantifying Carbon dioxide and Methane emissions and Carbon dynamics from flooded boreal forest soil
Received for publication January 16, 2008. The boreal forest is subject to natural and anthropogenic disturbances, but the production of greenhouse gases as a result of flooding for hydroelectric power generation has received little attention. It was hypothesized that flooded soil would result in greater CO2 and CH4 emissions and carbon (C) fractionation compared with non-flooded soil. To ...
-
Nutrient sorption dynamics of resin membranes and resin bags in a tropical forest
Plant root simulator (PRS) probes, a resin membrane technology, are increasingly used to measure soil nutrient availability in agricultural and nonagricultural systems. Like other resin technologies, the charged surface is meant to sorb nutrients until saturation; however, there is evidence that it acts as a dynamic exchanger in soils with low nutrient availability. This study compared the ...
-
Seven decades of Calcium depletion in organic horizons of Adirondack forest soils
We used repeated sampling of the forest floor to determine if there was a net loss of Ca from organic horizons of Adirondack forest soils between 1930 and 2004. In 1984, we established 48 permanent plots in spruce–fir, northern hardwood, and pine stands located in areas sampled by Carl C. Heimburger in the early 1930s. Following Heimburger's protocols and analytical methods, we measured pH and ...
-
Charcoal distribution affects Carbon and Nitrogen contents in forest soils of California
Fire is the dominant natural disturbance regime in most ecosystems of California. The long-term relict of fire is charcoal, which has been shown to increase N mineralization and also represents a pool of chemically stabilized C whose quantity and spatial distribution have not been well characterized in forest soils. We examined the charcoal content in three different ecosystems of the Sierra ...
-
Impacts of harvest residue management on soil Carbon stocks in a plantation forest
The impacts of plantation forest management on soil C stocks in New Zealand need to be better understood for the purposes of C accounting under the Kyoto Protocol. We investigated the impacts of three harvest residue management treatments on C and N stocks in a scoriaceous forest soil: whole-tree harvesting plus forest floor removal, whole-tree harvesting, and stem-only harvesting. Volumetric ...
Need help finding the right suppliers? Try XPRT Sourcing. Let the XPRTs do the work for you