Abstract
Abstract. Boreal ecosystems comprise one-tenth of the world's land surface and contain over 20 % of the global soil carbon (C) stocks. Boreal soil is unique in that its mineral soil is covered by what can be quite thick layers of organic soil. These organic soil layers, or horizons, can differ in their state of decomposition, source vegetation, and disturbance history. These differences result in varying soil properties (bulk density, C concentration, and nitrogen concentration) among soil horizons. Here we summarize these soil properties, as represented by over 3000 samples from Interior Alaska, and examine how soil drainage and stand age affect these attributes. The summary values presented here can be used to gap-fill large datasets when important soil properties were not measured, provide data to initialize process-based models, and validate model results. These data are available at https://doi.org/10.5066/P960N1F9 (Manies, 2019).
Highlights
Boreal soils play an important role in the global carbon (C) budget and are estimated to store between 375–690 Pg C (Hugelius et al, 2014; Bradshaw and Warkentin, 2015; Khvorostyanov et al, 2008), which is over 20 % of the global soil C stock (Jackson et al, 2017)
We examined the effect of fire or permafrost thaw disturbance on soil properties by categorizing each of the soil profiles in relation to time since the last disturbance, which we divided into three age classes: new (< 5 years old), young (5–50 years old), and mature (> 50 years old)
The differences we found between measured and predicted stocks could be due to regional differences between the Alaskan and Canadian sites in factors such as disturbance history or vegetation composition
Summary
Boreal soils play an important role in the global carbon (C) budget and are estimated to store between 375–690 Pg C (Hugelius et al, 2014; Bradshaw and Warkentin, 2015; Khvorostyanov et al, 2008), which is over 20 % of the global soil C stock (Jackson et al, 2017). A large portion of this C can be found within the organic soil layer (Jorgenson et al, 2013). Plant inputs into the soil can be relatively high during the summer, C losses from the soil are low, as cool and/or freezing soil temperatures result in low rates of decomposition. The imbalance between C inputs and losses results in organic soils that can be quite thick and store large amounts of C (Jorgenson et al, 2013). There is considerable C found in the mineral soil of these systems, especially where protected by permafrost (O’Donnell et al, 2011). Both organic and mineral soil play an important role in determining the amount of C stored in boreal ecosystems
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