Terrestrial organic carbon storage in a British moorland

Abstract

Summary Accurate estimates for the size of terrestrial organic carbon (C) stores are needed to determine their importance in regulating atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The C stored in vegetation and soil components of a British moorland was evaluated in order to: (i) investigate the importance of these ecosystems for C storage and (ii) test the accuracy of the United Kingdom's terrestrial C inventory. The area of vegetation and soil types was determined using existing digitized maps and a Geographical Information System (GIS). The importance of evaluating C storage using 2D area projections, as opposed to true surface areas, was investigated and found to be largely insignificant. Vegetation C storage was estimated from published results of productivity studies at the site supplemented by field sampling to evaluate soil C storage. Vegetation was found to be much less important for C storage than soil, with peat soils, particularly Blanket bog, containing the greatest amounts of C. Whilst the total amount of C in vegetation was similar to the UK national C inventory's estimate for the same area, the national inventory estimate for soil C was over three times higher than the value derived in the current study. Because the UK's C inventory can be considered relatively accurate compared to many others, the results imply that current estimates for soil C storage, at national and global scales, should be treated with caution.

Carbon sequestration

“…Wetland soils may contain as much as 200 times more C than the associated vegetation (Milne & Brown 1997;Garnett et al 2001). Gorham (1991) and Kobak et al (1998) estimated that C sequestration in wetlands/peatsoils since the post-glaciation period resulted in the C accumulation at the rate of 0.1 Pg C yr K1 over 10 000-18 000 years.…”

Spatial Variability of Bomb 14C in an Upland Peat Bog

“…NY70 30) was chosen as the study site, being an area of blanket bog moorland considered to be representative of British upland terrain. It is an area of high carbon storage (Garnett et al 2001) and has been intensively studied in the past (http://www.ecn.ac.uk/Publications.htm). Peat cores were taken from an experimental site within the Reserve, Hard Hill (NY735 335), an area characterized by gentle slopes with typical blanket bog/moorland vegetation.…”

Soil organic carbon in the Sanjiang Plain of China: storage, distribution and controlling factors

“…In the past decades, numerous studies were undertaken to investigate the storage and distribution heterogeneity of SOC in different regions, which include the North American Arctic (Ping et al, 2008), the Amazon (Batjes and Dijkshoorn, 1999), British moorland (Garnett et al, 2001), Laos (Chaplot, et al, 2010), France (Martin et al, 2011), and China (Ni, 2013;Yu et al, 2007). Globally, 32 % of SOC is stored in tropical soils, and mainly in forest soils (Eswaran et al, 1993).…”