Pollution-induced slowdown of coarse woody debris decomposition differs between two coniferous tree species

Abstract

Boreal forests store a large portion of the planet’s terrestrial carbon. A significant portion of this carbon is stored in coarse woody debris (CWD). Industrial pollution greatly inhibits organic matter decomposition and thus enhances carbon sequestration in the soil. However, little is known about the decomposition of CWD in polluted areas. In this work, by means of dendrochronological cross-dating, we determined the death dates of 90 downed Siberian spruce (Picea obovata Ledeb.) and Siberian fir (Abies sibirica Ledeb.) logs in the latest stages of decay in an undisturbed boreal forest and in two industrially polluted forests with 10-fold and more than 100-fold higher copper content in the soil. We found that, in the unpolluted area, the mean halftime of fir and spruce decomposition was 26 years and 23 years, respectively. In polluted areas, this time increased by approximately 16 years for fir and 5 years for spruce. Based on an exponential decay model, pollution caused a 16–60% decrease in the wood decomposition rate constant. Copper concentrations in CWD were similar between tree species and were about 10–20 times lower than in the surrounding soil. These values are comparable with the concentrations tolerated by fungi in laboratory tests, indicating that heavy metal excess cannot be considered a primary inhibitor of wood decomposer activity. The greater pollution-induced delay in the decomposition of fir trees, which are lighter and smaller in size than spruce trees, suggests that dead tree leaning is an important factor in the wood decomposition slowdown in polluted areas where stand density increases due to intensive forest regeneration because of the reduced competition of tree seedlings with toxically inhibited herbaceous vegetation.We also evaluated dynamic probing as a rapid, low-cost, and nondestructive surrogate of wood density measuring. Dynamic probing performed in the field on heavily decayed CWD explained about 40% of wood density variability and about 70% of variability when taking into account the gravimetrically measured wood moisture content. With negligible modifications, this method can be applied in the field monitoring of wood density loss. For the purpose of between-study comparisons, we recommend transforming the widely used measure of penetration depth to specific resistance to penetration and encourage the elaboration of reference tables that relate specific resistance to penetration and wood density for different tree species across distinct ecological zones.