Soil carbon stock change following afforestation in Northern Europe: a meta‐analysis

Abstract

Northern Europe supports large soil organic carbon (SOC) pools and has been subjected to high frequency of land-use changes during the past decades. However, this region has not been well represented in previous large-scale syntheses of land-use change effects on SOC, especially regarding effects of afforestation. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis of SOC stock change following afforestation in Northern Europe. Response ratios were calculated for forest floors and mineral soils (0-10 cm and 0-20/30 cm layers) based on paired control (former land use) and afforested plots. We analyzed the influence of forest age, former land-use, forest type, and soil textural class. Three major improvements were incorporated in the meta-analysis: analysis of major interaction groups, evaluation of the influence of nonindependence between samples according to study design, and mass correction. Former land use was a major factor contributing to changes in SOC after afforestation. In former croplands, SOC change differed between soil layers and was significantly positive (20%) in the 0-10 cm layer. Afforestation of former grasslands had a small negative (nonsignificant) effect indicating limited SOC change following this land-use change within the region. Forest floors enhanced the positive effects of afforestation on SOC, especially with conifers. Meta-estimates calculated for the periods <30 years and >30 years since afforestation revealed a shift from initial loss to later gain of SOC. The interaction group analysis indicated that meta-estimates in former land-use, forest type, and soil textural class alone were either offset or enhanced when confounding effects among variable classes were considered. Furthermore, effect sizes were slightly overestimated if sample dependence was not accounted for and if no mass correction was performed. We conclude that significant SOC sequestration in Northern Europe occurs after afforestation of croplands and not grasslands, and changes are small within a 30-year perspective.

Soil organic carbon and total nitrogen stocks under different land uses in a hilly ecological restoration area of North China

“…It was similar to most published studies (such as Jafarian and Kavian, 2013;Zhang et al, 2013;Gelaw et al, 2014). This phenomenon may be caused by thefact that forest has more SOC, origining from surface litter input, than cultivated land (Bárcena et al, 2014). Additionally, different soil properties and decomposition rate of different land use types in surface soil may affect SOC and STN (Table 2; Jafarian and Kavian, 2013).…”

“…Under the changes in land management, soil has historically played the roles of both source and sink of carbon (Torbert et al, 1997). Specifically, it has been well demonstrated that the SOC stock of ecosystem was significantly affected by the land use/cover change especially to agriculture activities (Wu et al, 2003;Gelaw et al, 2014;Gao et al, 2015), deforestation (Kucuker et al, 2015;Fujisaki et al, 2015), afforestation (Bárcena et al, 2014;Omonode and Vyn, 2006). As a summary, most of these studies have largely focused on SOC variability under different land uses and soil depth in horizon and vertical layers.…”

Soil organic carbon sequestration potential of artificial and natural vegetation in the hilly regions of Loess Plateau

“…Vegetation restoration from cropland into woodland, shrubland, and grassland has been recognized as an effective strategy for SOC stock and distribution (Bárcena et al, 2014;Deng et al, 2014;Zhu et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2014). However, natural vegetation restoration is distinctly different from the artificial approach in terms of management (Del Galdo et al, 2003;Six et al, 2000), microclimate (temperature and moisture) (Laganière et al, 2010), species composition , soil properties (Xu et al, 2014), and fine root quantity and quality (Solly et al, 2014), thus resulting in significantly different SOC stock and distribution (Jin et al, 2014).…”

Development and calibration of a soil carbon inventory model for New Zealand

“…Several studies in the literature have considered the SOC change as a result of land-use transition, within the context of a national or a regional sampling scheme (Callesen et al 2003), as a meta-analysis (Poeplau et al 2011, Bárcena et al 2014, or as a national assessment within a single land use transition (Davis and Condron 2002). The assessment of the significance of the SOC change resulting from of all possible land-use transitions is methodologically difficult, because individual studies frequently do not provide the information required to carry out the required calculations (Bretz et al 2010).…”