INFLUENCE OF FOREST MANAGEMENT INTO THE CARBON STORAGE IN SOIL

Natural EnvironmentMonitoring 2005, No 6, 75-83    

INFLUENCE OF FOREST MANAGEMENT INTO THE CARBON STORAGE IN SOIL

Marek Degórski

Summary

A great part of the global reserve of carbon is accumulated in the soils of forested terrestrial ecosystems. In the face of ongoing civilisational processes leading to rapid changes in properties of elements of the natural environment, the carbon balance is of ever greater strategic significance to socioeconomic development. Alongside the natural factors influencing the shaping of carbon storage in soils, an ever greater role is being played by anthropogenic processes. The aim of the paper has  been to determine the influence of trophic status, and management on the organic carbon storage in the soils of mixed pine-spruce forest with rusty soil and oak-hornbeam forest with lessive soil. The research was carried out in Białowieża National Park, Poland. The results obtained point to the negative influence of habitat fertility on the organic carbon storage in soil. Also indicated is the influence of forest cutting in lowering natural soil fertility, which is to say increased carbon storage in the soils of ecosystems subject to management, as opposed to that in forests under protection for a decade now.