HR: 17:30h
AN: B14C-05 [Abstracts]
TI: Could managed burning of peatlands lead to carbon storage?
AU: Clay, G
EM: g.d.clay@durham.ac.uk
AF: Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Durham, Durham, DH1 3LE, United Kingdom
AU: * Worrall, F
EM: Fred.Worrall@durham.ac.uk
AF: Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Durham, Durham, DH1 3LE, United Kingdom
AB:
Peatlands are the UK's largest single terrestrial carbon store with carbon stored in UK peatlands than in forests
of Britain and France combined. Unlike most northern peatlands in the peat soils of the UK are heavily managed
for recreation and agriculture and due to their proximity to major centres of population are under more
anthropogenic pressure than most peatlands. A typical management strategy on UK upland peats is the use of
managed fire to restrict vegetation. Fires are used upon a 10-25 year rotation and are described as "cool" as they
remove the crown of the vegetation without scorching the litter layer or the underlying soil. In this case the fire
destroys primary productivity and limits litter production but produces char. Char is a low volume, highly refractory,
high carbon content product while litter is a high volume, decomposable, lower carbon content product. Therefore,
the question is if there are fire conditions underwhich the production of char causes more carbon to be stored in
the peat than would have been stored if no fire management had been employed. This study uses detailed
vegetation studies from a long term monitoring site in order to assess litter and biomass production; in laboratory
experimental burns were undertaken in order to assess the amount and controls upon char production and the
carbon content of that char. Results of field and laboratory observations are used to model carbon accumulation
under s aseries of fire management scenarios and the modelling shows that cools burns at long rotations could
lead to higher carbon storage than if no fire had occurred, further than in several cases more carbon
accumulation occurred even if less depth of peat was generated.
DE: 0414 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0793, 1615, 4805, 4912)
DE: 0428 Carbon cycling (4806)
SC: Biogeosciences [B]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting