Erosion budget and process selectivity of black carbon at meter scale

Post-wildfire Erosion in Mountainous Terrain Leads to Rapid and Major Redistribution of Soil Organic Carbon

“…Our data also show that PyC is a dynamic pool of SOC, as seen by the significant drop in the PyC fraction in the topsoil of the depositional landform position (Figure 5). These findings are consistent with previous work, where erosion was demonstrated to play a major role in lateral redistribution of PyC post-fire, with implications for persistence of PyC in dynamic landscapes (Rumpel et al, 2009(Rumpel et al, , 2015.…”

“…These later erosion events generally transport more mineral material than the earlier erosion events, since pyrogenic material is typically preferentially transported in early erosion events after a fire (Rumpel et al, 2006(Rumpel et al, , 2009Yao et al, 2014). If the relatively SOCrich material that was originally deposited in the depositional landform position is buried with subsequent erosion, PyC and associated other soil C is likely to be physically stabilized in the soil profile of the depositional position.…”

Rock Fragments Control Size and Saturation of Organic Carbon Pools in Agricultural Topsoil

“…Th ey attributed the potential translocation of BC by water erosion to its small density. Irrigation experiments by Rumpel et al (2009) revealed that 7 to 55% of burned harvest residues were subject to horizontal translocation by splash erosion, which is the fi rst step toward water erosion. Translocation of BC was also observed as a result of downslope tillage by Zhang et al (2008), who identifi ed signifi cant downslope transport of bulk soil by altered 137 Cs signatures of summit and toe slope following repeated hoeing of an orthic Regosol.…”

Pyrogenic Carbon Erosion: Implications for Stock and Persistence of Pyrogenic Carbon in Soil

“…Erosion is a particularly important flux for PyC in soil when it stays on surface layers (Rumpel et al, 2006) at least on the order of months, if not longer (Boot et al, 2015;Faria et al, 2015), because this leaves PyC vulnerable to weathering forces of wind and water. However, current research has focused on hillslope-and plot-scale erosion of PyC (Rumpel et al, 2006(Rumpel et al, , 2009Abney et al, 2017;Pyle et al, 2017), so its redistribution at the watershed and larger scales remains largely unknown.…”

“…Accurate quantification of the rates of PyC loss through biological (decomposition) versus physical (erosion, leaching) processes is necessary for fully understanding its role in the soil C pool, including its potential role as a C sink (Hammes et al, 2008). Due to recent research indicating that PyC is preferentially eroded (Rumpel et al, 2006(Rumpel et al, , 2009, it is likely that it will be redistributed throughout the landscape differently than non-pyrogenic carbon, and this may have significant impacts on our understanding of its long-term persistence in soil, as is true for non-pyrogenic carbon (Berhe, 2012;Berhe et al, 2012). Recent evidence suggests that PyC often interacts with the soil minerals and microbial community differently than some forms of non-pyrogenic C (Kuzyakov et al, 2009;Zimmerman, 2010;Zimmerman et al, 2011), which makes measuring the fluxes of PyC critical for quantifying global PyC stocks.…”