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Soil carbon and litter development along a reconstructed biodiverse forest chronosequence of South-Western Australia
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Soil carbon and litter development along a reconstructed biodiverse forest chronosequence of South-Western Australia

S.J. George, R.N. Kelly, P.F. Greenwood and M. Tibbett
Biogeochemistry, Vol.101(1-3), pp.197-209
2010
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Abstract

Soil organic matter (SOM) increases with time as landscape is restored. Studying SOM development along restored forest chronosequences would be useful in clarifying some of the uncertainties in quantifying C turnover rates with respect to forest clearance and ensuing restoration. The development of soil organic matter in the mineral soils was studied at four depths in a 16-year-old restored jarrah forest chronosequence. The size-separated SOM fractionation along with δ13C isotopic shift was utilised to resolve the soil C temporal and spatial changes with developing vegetation. The restored forest chronosequence revealed several important insights into how soil C is developing with age. Litter accumulation outpaced the native forest levels in 12 years after restoration. The surface soils, in general, showed increase in total C with age, but this trend was not clearly observed at lower depths. C accumulation was observed with increasing restoration age in all three SOM size-fractions in the surface 0–2 cm depth. These biodiverse forests show a trend towards accumulating C in recalcitrant stable forms, but only in the surface 0–2 cm mineral soil. A significant reverse trend was observed for the moderately labile SOM fraction for lower depths with increasing restoration age. Correlating the soil δ13C with total C concentration revealed the re-establishment of the isotopically depleted labile to enriched refractory C continuum with soil depth for the older restored sites. This implied that from a pedogenic perspective, the restored soils are developing towards the original native soil carbon profile.

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UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This output has contributed to the advancement of the following goals:

#2 Zero Hunger
#13 Climate Action
#14 Life Below Water
#15 Life on Land

Source: InCites

Metrics

InCites Highlights

These are selected metrics from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool, related to this output

Citation topics
3 Agriculture, Environment & Ecology
3.45 Soil Science
3.45.112 Soil Carbon Dynamics
Web Of Science research areas
Environmental Sciences
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
ESI research areas
Environment/Ecology
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