Grassland fire effect on soil organic carbon reservoirs in semiarid environment

Abstract

Abstract. The aim of this work was to investigate the effect of a experimental fire, used for grassland management, on soil organic carbon (SOC) reservoirs. The study was carried out on Hyparrhenia hirta (L.) Stapf (Hh) grassland and Ampelodesmos mauritanicus (Desf.) T. Durand and Schinz (Am) grasslands, located in the north of Sicily. Soil samples were collected at 0–5 cm before and after experimental fire and SOC was measured. During grassland fire soil surface temperature was monitored. Biomass of both grasses was analyzed in order to determine dry weight and its chemical composition. The results showed that SOC varied significantly with vegetation cover, while it is not affected in the short period by grassland fire. Am grassland stored more SOC compared with Hh grassland thanks to lower content in biomass of labile carbon pool. No significant difference was observed in SOC before and after fire which could be caused by several factors: first, in both grassland types the measured soil temperature during fire was low due to thin litter layers; second, in semiarid environment higher mineralization rate results in lower soil carbon labile pool; and third, the C stored in the finest soil fractions, physical protected, is not affected by fire.

Impacts of two spatially and temporally isolated anthropogenic fire eventson soils of oak-dominated Zagros forests of Iran

“…It also aids in regulating soil temperature and provides habitat and substrates for soil biota. Furthermore, it can be a major source of readily mineralizable nutrients (Neary et al, 1999) and therefore supplies the plants with most of the available P and S, and virtually all of the available N. Soil OM's role in N storage is especially important in forests because their continued high productivity depends, to a large extent, on large supplies of available N. In contrast, Novara et al (2013) showed that there was no significant difference between burned and unburned sites as far as OM was concerned.…”

“…Fire is an important abiotic factor that causes substantial changes to the soil profile and characteristics depending on the severity and the duration of burning (Amaranthus, 1989). The most affected soil properties are texture (Scharenbroch et al, 2012;Norouzi and Ramezanpour, 2013), organic matter (OM) content (Novara et al, 2013), nutrient availability (Scharenbroch et al, 2012), porosity, pH (Certini, 2005;León et al, 2013), and electrical conductivity (EC) (León et al, 2013;Norouzi and Ramezanpour, 2013). Fire leads to burning of OM and this in turn affects the nutrient status of soil (Hart et al, 2005).…”

Base de Conhecimentos Gerados na Engenharia Ambiental e Sanitária 2

“…Cotejando-se os dados é evidente que os referidos municípios são contribuintes potenciais para a poluição do meio ambiente devido a prática da queima e as consequências provenientes dela naquela região. A queima reduz o estoque de carbono orgânico do solo (NOVARA, et al, 2013). No entanto, se faz necessário o manejo dos campos de pastagens para que não sejam substituídos por vegetação lenhosa.…”

Effect of the Wildfires on Sandy Podzol Soils of Nadym Region, Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Russia

“…A lot of attention is paid to the problem of postpyrogenic soil change, its properties, soil regime, and functions in a boreal zone. A variety of research studies are devoted to pyrogenic transformation of the water regime, vegetation, and forest landscapes in whole [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. However, data on similar studies of the pyrogenic transformation in polar, tundra, and subboreal landscapes of cryolithozone are extremely rare in the literature.…”