0000000000131668
AUTHOR
Hermann F. Jungkunst
Accounting More Precisely for Peat and Other Soil Carbon Resources
In the context of “recarbonization”, it is important to know where the soil C stocks are located and how much of these are prone to emission to the atmosphere. While it may appear to be a trivial question considering available global estimates and maps, yet there is a strong need to emphasize that erroneous estimates are made in assessing the global soil C stocks. Without doubt, peatlands hold the single most important soil C stock at the global scale, and these soils are mostly located in the northern latitudes between 50°N and 70°N. However, there are additional wetlands or other ecosystems which also hold potentially relevant amounts of soil C stocks. From the soil science perspective, i…
Root-induced tree species effects on the source/sink strength for greenhouse gases (CH4, N2O and CO2) of a temperate deciduous forest soil
Through their leaf litter and throughfall water, tree species can have a pronounced influence on soil chemistry. However, there is little knowledge of species-specific root effects on greenhouse gas fluxes between forest soils and the atmosphere. By growing saplings of beech (Fagus sylvatica) and ash (Fraxinus excelsior) in monoculture or mixture at defined atmospheric and soil conditions in rhizotrons, we tested four hypotheses related to potential root-induced tree species effects on the uptake of CH4 and the emission of N2O and CO2 from the soil. This design excluded putative effects of leaf litter mineralisation on trace gas fluxes. Gas fluxes were measured biweekly using the closed cha…