Effects of fire and harvest on soil respiration in a mixed-conifer forest

Forest ecosystems, and in particular forest soils, constitute a major reservoir of global terrestrial carbon and soil respiration is the largest carbon loss from these ecosystems. Disturbances can affect soil respiration, causing physical and chemical changes in soil characteristics, adding both, above and belowground necromass, and changing microclimatic conditions. This could signify an important and long term carbon loss, even higher than the carbon directly removed by the harvest or during fire. These losses need to be included when quantifying the net carbon balance of forests. We measured the impacts of prescribed fire and clear-cut tree harvest on soil respiration in a mixed-conifer forest in the central Sierra Nevada. The prescribed fire treatment was implemented in 2002 and again in 2009. Four areas were clear-cut harvested in 2010. In half of these units the soils were mechanically ripped to reduce soil compaction, a common practice in the Sierra Nevada industrial forest lands. Soil respiration was measured using two different techniques: the chamber method and the gradient method. Soil respiration was affected by treatments in two different ways. First, treatments changed soil temperature and soil water content, the main abiotic factors controlling soil respiration. The clear cut and the prescribed fire treatments created higher maximum soil temperature and more available soil water content, environmental conditions favorable to soil respiration. However, the loss of trees and thus fine roots, and the decrease of soil litter and organic layers, because of their combustion or removal, had a negative effect on soil respiration that was stronger than the positive effect due to more favorable post disturbance environmental conditions. Soil respiration rates remained steady 1-2 years after treatments and no increase or spikes of soil respiration were measured after treatments. Continuous measurements of CO₂ concentrations at different soil depths improved our understanding of effect of disturbances on CO₂ production and diffusion through the soil. Sites differed on how much, when and at what depth CO₂ was produced and released into the atmosphere. Because forest management practices in a mixed conifer forest in the Sierra Nevada, despite the changes in soil environmental conditions and the added necromass, didn't cause a strong and persistent increase of soil respiration in the first few years after treatments, the carbon uptake of a new generation of trees, or the increased tree growth following treatments, could balance, in time, the carbon lost during or after the treatments.