Macro-Particle Charcoal C Content following Prescribed Burning in a Mixed-Conifer Forest, Sierra Nevada, California

Fire suppression and changing climate have resulted in increased large wildfire frequency and severity in the western United States, causing carbon cycle impacts. Forest thinning and prescribed burning reduce high-severity fire risk, but require removal of biomass and emissions of carbon from burnin...

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Vydáno v:	PloS one Ročník 10; číslo 8; s. e0135014
Hlavní autoři:	Wiechmann, Morgan L., Hurteau, Matthew D., Kaye, Jason P., Miesel, Jessica R.
Médium:	Journal Article
Jazyk:	angličtina
Vydáno:	United States Public Library of Science 10.08.2015 Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Témata:	Biomass Biomass burning Burning California Carbon Carbon content Carbon Cycle Charcoal Charcoal - analysis Charcoal - chemistry Climate change Coniferophyta - chemistry Coniferous forests Conservation of Natural Resources - methods Controlled burning Debris Ecology Ecosystem Ecosystems Emissions Environmental changes Environmental restoration Fires Forest ecosystems Forestry - methods Forests Geochemistry Historical account Mixed forests Models, Statistical Nitrogen Organic matter Organic soils Particle Size Prescribed burning Prescribed fire Restoration Science Soil - chemistry Soil organic matter Soil sciences Spontaneous combustion Thinning Trees - chemistry Understory Wildfires California United States > US New Mexico Pennsylvania Nevada Michigan
ISSN:	1932-6203, 1932-6203
On-line přístup:	Získat plný text
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Shrnutí:	Fire suppression and changing climate have resulted in increased large wildfire frequency and severity in the western United States, causing carbon cycle impacts. Forest thinning and prescribed burning reduce high-severity fire risk, but require removal of biomass and emissions of carbon from burning. During each fire a fraction of the burning vegetation and soil organic matter is converted into charcoal, a relatively stable carbon form. We sought to quantify the effects of pre-fire fuel load and type on charcoal carbon produced by biomass combusted in a prescribed burn under different thinning treatments and to identify more easily measured predictors of charcoal carbon mass in a historically frequent-fire mixed-conifer forest. We hypothesized that charcoal carbon produced from coarse woody debris (CWD) during prescribed burning would be greater than that produced from fine woody debris (FWD). We visually quantified post-treatment charcoal carbon content in the O-horizon and the A-horizon beneath CWD (> 30 cm diameter) and up to 60 cm from CWD that was present prior to treatment. We found no difference in the size of charcoal carbon pools from CWD (treatment means ranged from 0.3-2.0 g m-2 of A-horizon and 0.0-1.7 g m-2 of O-horizon charcoal) and FWD (treatment means ranged from 0.2-1.7 g m-2 of A-horizon and 0.0-1.5 g m-2 of O-horizon charcoal). We also compared treatments and found that the burn-only, understory-thin and burn, and overstory-thin and burn treatments had significantly more charcoal carbon than the control. Charcoal carbon represented 0.29% of total ecosystem carbon. We found that char mass on CWD was an important predictor of charcoal carbon mass, but only explained 18-35% of the variation. Our results help improve our understanding of the effects forest restoration treatments have on ecosystem carbon by providing additional information about charcoal carbon content.
Bibliografie:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 14 content type line 23 Conceived and designed the experiments: MLW MDH JPK JRM. Performed the experiments: MLW. Analyzed the data: MLW MDH. Wrote the paper: MLW MDH JPK JRM. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Current address: Department of Biology, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States of America
ISSN:	1932-6203 1932-6203
DOI:	10.1371/journal.pone.0135014