Soil & Water Res., 2022, 17(3):139-148 | DOI: 10.17221/19/2022-SWR

The impact of forest naturalness and tree species composition on soil organic carbon content in areas with unnatural occurrence of Norway spruce in the Czech RepublicOriginal Paper

Marián Horváth*,1, Petra Hanáková Bečvářová1, Bořivoj Šarapatka1, Václav Zouhar2
1 Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Science, Palacký University Olomouc, Olomouc-Holice, Czech Republic
2 Forest Management Institute, Brandýs nad Labem, Branch Brno, Brno, Czech Republic

Climate change has increased attention paid in the research to forest soils and tree species composition, in respect to the potential for carbon sequestration. It is known that forest stands are able to store soil organic carbon (SOC), but little is known about the effect of forest naturalness on SOC content. This is important in relation of dying of unnatural spruce stands. It is necessary to determine a suitable composition of tree species which will replace them. This research is based on 248 plots with oak, beech, and spruce stands and mixtures of these species, with measured values of SOC. Our results show that autochthonous and mixed stands, in terms of tree species composition, in the study area had a higher SOC content than allochthonous and pure stands. In addition, it was found that autochthonous oak and beech stands, especially in mixtures, had a higher SOC content than allochthonous spruce stands (monocultures). On the basis of the presented results, it is possible to optimize the future tree species composition of stands in the study area, which currently have an allochthonous representation of spruce, to provide better function of carbon sequestration and resistance to climate change.

Keywords: carbon sequestration; climate change; forest naturalness; forest soil

Published: June 20, 2022  Show citation

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Horváth M, Hanáková Bečvářová P, Šarapatka B, Zouhar V. The impact of forest naturalness and tree species composition on soil organic carbon content in areas with unnatural occurrence of Norway spruce in the Czech Republic. Soil & Water Res. 2022;17(3):139-148. doi: 10.17221/19/2022-SWR.
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