A Holistic View of Soils in Delivering Ecosystem Services in Forests: A Case Study in South Korea

Abstract

In 1955, after the Korean War, only 35% of the national land area in South Korea was covered by forests. In the 1960s, the Korean Government implemented the national forestation program in order to increase the extent of the forest surface and thereby counteract the negative ecological consequences from deforestation, such as erosion and ground instability. According to previous studies, this led to an increase in carbon (C) accumulated in the forest biomass of 1.48 Gt CO 2 (0.40 Gt C) in the period 1954-2012. However, these studies did not take into account the amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) that was accumulated during that period and the influence of management practices on soil ecosystem services. Currently, South Korean authorities are considering the idea of implementing some forest management practices in order to increase timber extraction (e.g., by reducing the cutting age of the trees or by applying thinning and tending measures). In this study, we assess the influence of these management regimes on SOC dynamics and propose a theoretical framework to assess the influence of forest management practices on three ecosystem services, namely, C sequestration, water supply, and biomass production, while considering soil functioning, and especially SOC, as a group of supporting services underpinning the three named ecosystem services. We find that, in terms of SOC sequestration, reducing the cutting age from 80 to 40 years would be suitable only in the case of high biomass production forests, whereas in the case of lower biomass production forests reducing the cutting age would achieve very low SOC levels. However, we propose that increasing tree species diversity, even though it would not lead to a direct increase in the SOC content, could help to lessen the negative effects of reducing the cutting age by improving other soil properties, which in turn positively affect soil functioning (e.g., soil biodiversity, nutrient availability) and the resilience of the forest ecosystem. Finally, we discuss potential policy approaches to incentivize sustainable management practices in South Korean forests from a soil protection perspective.

Systematic review of soil ecosystem services in tropical regions

“…The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB), for example, removed support services from its framework as they do not directly benefit society and defined them as biophysical structure, processes and functions [ 33 ]. As noted previously, in many studies, the term SES has been used interchangeably with the terms soil function and soil processes [ 4 , 6 , 34 ]. This observation highlights the need for adopting a clear and universal definition of SES.…”

“…Amazonian Dark Earths and soil modified by charcoal kilns in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest) [ 38 – 41 ]. A low number of publications referring to cultural SES has been reported in previous publications [ 6 ] and might be explained by the fact that SES is often recognized as supporting other ES [ 4 ]. In the discussion of ES, cultural services have been the least addressed in the literature [ 42 ].…”

Soil organic carbon stock assessment in forest ecosystems through pedogenic horizons and fixed depth layers sampling: What's the best one?

“…Italian forests are mainly distributed in mountainous areas (Cesaro & Romano, 2017), where soils are often characterized to be poorly developed, shallow and skeletal due to limited pedogenic processes and high soil erosion rates (Alewell et al, 2008; Guerra et al, 2020; Romeo et al, 2015). Further, mountain soils are recognized to have a high sensitivity to climate change (Hagedorn et al, 2010), which make them highly vulnerable to SOC decline, erosion and further soil degradation (Bojko & Kabala, 2016; Conforti et al, 2013), which, in turn, can affect the ecosystem functions supplied by forest soil such as biomass production, nutrient and water supply, C sequestration and biodiversity conservation (Baveye et al, 2016; Vicente‐Vicente et al, 2019).…”

Optimal Allocation of Slope Ecological Restoration for the Climate Change Mitigation and Natural Function Improvement

“…Functional types increased, functional coordination increased, and comprehensive evaluation index increased significantly. We also propose that increasing tree species diversity which will positively affect soil functioning (e.g., soil biodiversity, nutrient availability), the resilience of the forest ecosystem, and the ecological service functions of watersheds (Vicente-Vicente et al, 2019).…”