Evaluation of soil organic carbon storage in a sustainable forest chestnut context

• Autor(a) principal: Patrício, Maria Sameiro
• Data de Publicação: 2014
• Outros Autores: Nunes, Luís, Pereira, Ermelinda
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10198/14021
• topic: Castanea sativa Mill.; Soil carbon stocks; Forest sustainable management; High forest chestnut

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the major carbon (C) stock of the terrestrial biosphere with great importance for the balance of C at the global scale. So, a reliable estimate of the stored C in the mineral soil pool of forest ecosystems is of great importance. Inventory information on SOC stocks is very scattered, because of the inherent large spatial variability and the need of enormous sampling efforts. Therefore, traditional broadleaves species, less representative in the global context and scattered, as chestnut (Castanea sativa Mill.), are poorly sampled. Thus, this study was carried out to estimate the soil organic carbon (SOC) stock in traditional forests of sweet chestnut, based on in situ observations, to know the real contribution of this type of forests to the SOC stocks. This research was developed on old chestnut high forests for quality timber production submitted to a silviculture management close-to-nature located in Northern Portugal. At this stage the stands are close to self-thinning. Samples from soil profile at depths 0-10 cm, 10-30 cm and 30-60 cm were collected in 2002 and 2012. Besides the objective to know the real contribution of this type of forests to the SOC stocks, the evolution of the C storage was studied to also analyze the general capacity of the site concerning its sustainability and soil carbon pool. The cumulative amount of SOC shows an increase of 9% over 2002 in Marão and an increase of 4% in Bornes.