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Soil Carbon Stocks in Old Growth Forest: Drivers of variability in soil organic carbon stocks in old growth boreal forests
Umeå University, Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences.
2023 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor), 10 credits / 15 HE creditsStudent thesisAlternative title
Markkolslager i Gammelskogar : Drivkrafter för variabilitet i organiska markkolslager i boreala gammelskogar (Swedish)
Abstract [en]

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the largest carbon pool in terrestrial ecosystems, which plays an important role in climate change by regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide. Sweden’s forest management has led to a decrease in old growth forests. This change in land use can affect SOC levels in these forests. This report quantified SOC stocks among different wetness classes in 10 old growth forests across multiple regional environmental gradients in Sweden. I tested for the effects of some different environmental factors on SOC: temperature, precipitation, altitude, stem basal area, latitude, and normalized difference vegetation index. Soil measurements were taken from three different horizons: the O-, E-, and B-horizon. The results showed that the mean SOC stock in old growth forests (5.25 ± 0.60 kg m-2)  is a bit higher than the regional average (4.1 ± 0.5 kg m-2) and that local variation within forests, mainly due to hydrology, appears to drive variation that is often as big or larger than regional variations. There were no significant differences between the different forests, but there were significant differences found between the different wetness classes. There were several correlations found between the different regional environmental factors and SOC stocks. The most prominent relationship was a positive link between the O-horizons’ SOC stocks and temperature (R2adj = 0.58). Overall, these results indicate that SOC stocks in old growth forests are affected by both soil wetness at a local scale and air temperature at a regional scale; and that they might contain a slightly larger amount of SOC than managed forests.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 13
Keywords [en]
old growth forest, boreal, soil organic carbon stocks, climate gradient
National Category
Earth and Related Environmental Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-209595OAI: oai:DiVA.org:umu-209595DiVA, id: diva2:1765764
Subject / course
Examensarbete i Naturgeografi för kandidatexamen
Educational program
Bachelor of Science in Biology and Earthscience
Presentation
2023-06-02, 10:00
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2023-06-15 Created: 2023-06-12 Last updated: 2025-02-07Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
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  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf