%0 Journal Article
%T Change in Soil and Forest Floor Carbon after Shelterwood Harvests in a New England Oak-Hardwood Forest, USA
%A Kayanna L. Warren
%A Mark S. Ashton
%J International Journal of Forestry Research
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/527236
%X There has been effort worldwide to quantify how much carbon forests contain in order to designate appropriate offset credits to forest carbon climate mitigation. Carbon pools on or immediately below the soil surface are understood to be very active in response to environmental change but are not well understood. Our study focused on the effects of shelterwood regeneration harvests in New England on the carbon stored in litter, woody debris, and surface soil carbon. Results demonstrate significant difference in surface (0每10ˋcm) soil carbon between control (nonharvested) and harvested sites, with higher carbon percentage on control sites. Results showed a significant difference in coarse woody debris with higher amounts of carbon per area on harvested sites. No significant difference in litter mass was recorded between harvested and control sites. When coarse woody debris and litter are included with soil carbon, total carbon did not have a significant decline over 20 years following shelterwood treatment to the forest to secure regeneration, but there was considerable variability among sites. When taking all surface soil carbon measurements together, our results suggest that for accounting purposes the measurement of below-ground carbon after shelterwood harvests is not necessary for the southern New England region. 1. Introduction The terrestrial carbon cycle takes up a considerable amount of atmospheric carbon, especially CO2, [1, 2], the increase of which has been cited as the main driver of global climate change [3, 4]. Maintenance of forest cover and reduction of deforestation rates have been proposed by numerous studies and policy processes as a means to reduce the magnitude of climate change [5每7]. It is therefore important that below-ground carbon pools are well understood. Persistent lack of clarity surrounds much of the efforts to tabulate, quantify, and account for the amount of carbon that is stored by forest ecosystems and thus makes its inclusion in policy protocols and its accounting expensive and challenging [8每11]. There is ongoing debate about how management affects overall carbon, with some studies suggesting that old growth forests store more carbon [12每16] while other studies find that continuous timber harvests reduce atmospheric carbon levels more [7, 17]. However, the effects of anthropogenic disturbance, such as harvest, on belowground carbon quantity〞belowground pools〞is still largely unknown and thinly researched [18每22]. Only a handful of studies on soil carbon pools represent all tropical forests combined, with most studies
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijfr/2014/527236/