Simulating soil carbon accumulation in an upland black spruce ecosystem of interior Alaska: implications for permafrost carbon dynamics to climate change

Abstract:

Boreal terrestrial ecosystems act as a huge reservoir of organic carbon, most of which is mainly stored in both active-layer soils and permafrost. Recently, many observational studies have revealed that ongoing climate warming has promoted changes in fire regime, which stimulates the permafrost thaw in the boreal area. Consequently, the decomposition rate of the organic and mineral soils will increase and a large amount of CO₂ will be released into the atmosphere. The sustained CO₂­ release from the soils may create a positive feedback in relation to carbon cycling between the atmosphere and boreal terrestrial ecosystems. However, there still remains substantial uncertainty for evaluating the mechanisms of the carbon cycle feedbacks over centuries. In the present study, we examined the effect of warming and fire episodes on soil carbon dynamics in an upland black spruce ecosystem in interior Alaska, by using a Physical and Biogeochemical Soil Dynamics Model (PB-SDM) which can simulate the feedback cycle of soil organic carbon accumulation with soil thermal and hydrological dynamics. The result indicates that soil carbon accumulation in the organic layer was strongly dominated by increased temperature. In addition, fire events by which a great number of soil layers burned contributed to decrease in soil carbon accumulation largely in the organic layer. On the other hand, remarkably increased temperature conditions (around 9.6℃ by 3000) controlled soil carbon accumulation in the mineral layer and changes in soil decomposition rate accompanying with the shift from frozen to thawed conditions with warming accelerated soil carbon decomposition. It is suggested that future climate warming would result in drastic decrease in the soil carbon stock, largely from the organic layer, whereas the vulnerability of deeper soil carbon to future warming is closely connected to permafrost degradation due to wildfire disturbance.