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Effect of air-drying pre-treatment on the characterization of forest soil carbon pools

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Publication date: 1 March 2016
Source:Geoderma, Volume 265
Author(s): A. Villada, E.I. Vanguelova, A. Verhoef, L.J. Shaw
Archived soils could represent a valuable resource for the spatio-temporal inventory of soil carbon stability. However, archived soils are usually air-dried before storage and the impact of a drying pretreatment on physically and chemically-defined C fractions has not yet been fully assessed. Through the comparison of field-moist and corresponding air-dried (at 25°C for 2weeks) forest soil samples, we examined the effect of air-drying on: a) the quantity and the quality of cold- (CWEC) and hot-water (HWEC) extractable C and b) the concentration of C in physically isolated fractions (free- and intra-aggregate light and organo-mineral). Soil samples were collected from the organic (O) and mineral (A and B) horizons of three different forest soils from southeastern England: (i) cambisol under pine (Pinus nigra); (ii) cambisol under beech (Fagus sylvatica) and (iii) gleysol under oak (Quercus robur). CWEC concentrations for dry samples were up to 2 times greater than for corresponding field moist samples and had significantly (p<0.001) higher phenolic content. However, the effect of drying pretreatment on HWEC and its phenolic content was not significant (p>0.05) for most samples. Dried soils had significantly (p<0.001) higher concentrations of free light-C while having lower concentrations of intra-aggregate-C when compared to moist samples (p<0.001). However, fine silt and clay fractions were not significantly affected by the drying pretreatment (p=0.789). Therefore, based on the results obtained from gleysol and cambisol forest soils studied here, C contents in hot-water extractions and fine particle size physical fractions (<25μm) seem to be robust measurements for evaluating C fractions in dried stored forest soils. Further soil types should be tested to evaluate the wider generality of these findings.


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