Deep Soil Horizons: Contribution and Importance to Soil Carbon Pools and in Assessing Whole-Ecosystem Response to Management and Global Change

作者：Robert B. Harrison, Paul W. Footen, Brian D. Strahm · 发表于：Forest Science · 年份：2011 · DOI：10.1093/forestscience/57.1.67 · 被引用次数：267 · 研究领域：Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics、Rangeland and Wildlife Management、Geology and Paleoclimatology Research

Abstract Most of the C in terrestrial ecosystems is found in the soil. Although C calculations indicate that soils are more important than plants as reservoirs of C, soil rarely receives the attention given aboveground ecosystem components when C budgets are calculated. When soil pools are quantified they are typically sampled to relatively shallow depths. Shallow soil sampling in research includes studies that estimate C and nutrient pools and studies assessing the response of terrestrial ecosystems (i.e., forests, grasslands, and agricultural fields) to management treatments. Although many soils have sola that are substantially deeper than 20 cm and C accumulates well below these depths in many soils, the majority of studies of soil C sample to depths of 20 cm or less, generally because of the difficulty and cost of sampling the soil profile deeper. Shallow soil sampling is often justified by assuming that deeper soil horizons are stable and will not change over time, although some medium- and long-term studies do not support this assumption. Shallow soil sampling can result in both a major underestimate of soil C present in the soil profile and an inability to adequately measure the impacts of both treatments for specific goals (i.e., tillage, fertilization, and vegetation management) or other changes (i.e., global change and atmospheric inputs) over time in whole-ecosystem studies. We assessed the potential of shallow soil sampling to underestimate C in the soil profile a...