Mapping Soil Carbon in Wildfire-Affected Areas of the McKenzie River Landscape, Oregon, USA
Abstract
In the Pacific Northwest, forest fires are increasing in frequency and severity as a result of changing temperature and precipitation patterns. Wildfires are an integral part of forest ecosystem dynamics in this region, but catastrophic fires that are becoming annually record-breaking are detrimental to plant life, atmospheric conditions, and the livelihoods of nearby people. Studying the role of forest fires and their effects on soil and carbon dynamics will further our understanding of the impacts of climate change on the Pacific Northwest and could potentially drive land management plans, such as the role of prescribed burning for the purposes of soil carbon sequestration. Forests and soils are variable on even the landscape level; therefore, site-specific and geographically focused research is needed in order to understand how climate change and large wildfires affect individual landscapes. In this study, we quantify and map the variability of soil carbon pools across a burn severity gradient (unburned old growth, low severity, and high severity) in order to assess the conditions of soil carbon sequestration one year after a catastrophic wildfire in the McKenzie River, Oregon landscape. We are testing soils for total organic carbon, mineral associated carbon, particulate organic carbon, and pyrogenic carbon using samples taken from the Holiday Farm Fire (September 2020) with a sampling scheme of twenty points per burned hectare and nine points per three unburned hectares arranged in a gridded fashion, all at 0-2cm, 2-20cm, and 20-40cm depth profiles. Mapping the movement of soil carbon after a wildfire will give insight to the potential of using low severity burns as a mechanism for carbon sequestration in Pacific Northwest forests in order to lessen the wildfire impacts of climate change on this region.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2022
- Bibcode:
- 2022AGUFM.B22H1537K