Soil Management Impacts on Soil Carbon

Soil represents long-term interactions between the ground (mineral material and organic soil matter), climate, trees, ground vegetation, soil animals, and microbial communities. These interactions modify the structure and functioning of soil, including the physical and chemical properties related to its stocks of water, nutrients, and organic matter with carbon. In natural succession, wildfires and the uprooting of trees disturb the surface and even deeper layers of soil through the rooting zone. Disturbance of forest soils maintains their long-term fertility based on changes in primary and secondary production over space and time. The response of soil carbon is also affected by the different impacts of forest management on the structure and dynamics of carbon stocks in the ecosystem. Soil management can be divided into prescribed burning and mechanical management. Both of these processes affect the soil carbon bound in ground vegetation, soil litter, soil detritus, and mineral soil affecting the release of nutrients and carbon bound in soil organic matter. The consequent mixture of soil layers with patches of open mineral soil provides seedbeds for germination of seeds and rooting of initial seedlings improving the success of natural regeneration. Soil management also makes manual seeding and planting in reforestation easier, thus reducing the required workforce and enhancing regeneration success.