Harvest impacts on soil carbon storage in temperate forests

Life cycle impacts of forest management and wood utilization on carbon mitigation: knowns and unknowns

“…In a field study, Fredeen et al found no significant difference in soil and forest floor carbon between old growth and young second growth forests in central British Columbia, although they did find that old forests contained more carbon in standing stocks, as one would expect [11]. In a more recent meta-ana lysis, Nave et al found no significant difference in mineral soil carbon between harvested and unharvested sites, although there were significant differences in forest floors between treated and untreated sites, particularly for hardwood forests [45]. The results included studies that had post harvest plowing, ripping and broadcast burning.…”

Forest Carbon Sequestration: The Impact of Forest Management

“…However, these authors also reported differences depending on the harvest method used: there was a slight reduction in soil carbon stocks when whole-tree harvesting was applied and a moderate increase with sawlog harvesting; but this was restricted to coniferous species. The Nave et al, (2010) meta-analysis found that harvesting reduced soil carbon stocks in a small but significant way: forest floor carbon stocks decreased markedly and no influence was detected in the mineral soil, though great variation was identified between soil orders. This forest floor carbon stock reduction tendency for thinned stands is corroborated by several studies (e.g., Vesterdal et al, 1995;Jonard et al, 2006;Powers et al, 2012;Ruiz-Peinado et al, 2013), though other authors have reported little or no influence (Novák and Slodicák, 2004;Chatterjee et al, 2009;Jurgensen et al, 2012).…”

Managing a boreal forest landscape for providing timber, storing and sequestering carbon

“…Because we did not have data available for estimating carbon biomass in soils, it was not considered in this study despite the high importance of soil carbon (Liski et al 2006). The review of Nave et al (2010) showed a significant decrease in soil carbon following harvesting. However, carbon losses could be largely avoided by reducing physical disturbance to the soil profile during site preparation.…”