Role of forest soils in the national greenhouse gas inventory
Abstract
In Austria the forests are a key category of the GHG budget. The role of forest soils as a sink or source of carbon has so far not been fully assessed and as a default position a stable soil carbon pool was reported. A combination from a modeling exercise and a field survey allowed the scrutinization of this assumption. The field data represent a repeated soil inventory after 20 years. Due to the spatial heterogeneity of chemical soil properties no clear conclusion of the temporal change of soil carbon was made. The data set from the field survey was used for the validation of a modeling exercise. We used the model Yasso07 that is well suited for the available site information in Austria. The measured and the simulated soil carbon change had an acceptable fit. The modeling exercise suggested a statistically insignificant loss of soil carbon during a committment period of the Kyoto Protocol. The standing biomass of the forest is still a carbon sink. Owing to the large forest area this insignificant soil carbon loss strongly reduces the carbon sink strength of the entire forest.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2012
- Bibcode:
- 2012AGUFM.B13C0531J
- Keywords:
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- 0428 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Carbon cycling;
- 0466 BIOGEOSCIENCES / Modeling