Carbon storage in forest soil of Finland. 2. Size and regional pattern

Abstract

For confidently estimating the amount of carbon stored in boreal forestsoil, better knowledge of smaller regions is needed. In order to estimatethe amount of soil C in forests on mineral soil in Finland, i.e. excludingpeatland forests, and illustrate the regional patterns of the storage,statistical models were first made for the C densities of the organic and0–1 m mineral soil layers. A forest type, which indicated siteproductivity, and the effective temperature sum were used asexplanatory variables of the models. In addition, a constant C densitywas applied for the soil layer below the depth of 1 m on sortedsediments. Using these models the C densities were calculated for atotal of 46673 sites of the National Forest Inventory (NFI). The amountof the soil C was then calculated in two ways: 1) weighting the Cdensities of the NFI sites by the land area represented by these sites and2) interpolating the C densities of the NFI sites for 4 ha blocks to coverthe whole land area of Finland and summing up the blocks on forestedmineral soil. The soil C storage totalled 1109 Tg and 1315 Tg, whencalculated by the areal weighting and the interpolated blocks,respectively. Of that storage, 28% was in the organic layer, 68% inthe 0–1 m mineral soil layer and 4% in the layer below 1 m. The totalsoil C equals more than two times the amount of C in tree biomass and20% of the amount of C in peat in Finland. Soil C maps made usingthe interpolated blocks indicated that the largest soil C reserves arelocated in central parts of southern Finland. The C storage of theorganic layer was assessed to be overestimated at largest by 13% andthat of the 0–1 m mineral soil layer by 29%. The largest error in theorganic layer estimate is associated with the effects of forest harvestingand in the mineral soil estimate with the stone content of the soil.