US Forest Service prescribed burn in California’s Sierra National Forest. Credit: US Forest Service
Wildfires and prescribed burns, which might promote soil natural matter stability, could also be an essential nature-based local weather resolution to extend long-term carbon storage.
That is the conclusion of a world staff of researchers, together with a scientist from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), who appeared on the impact of wildfires and prescribed burns on the worldwide carbon cycle. The analysis seems in Nature Geosciences.
In the brand new analysis, the staff reviewed the proof for the way hearth impacts the elements that decide the SOM stability — and never simply the SOM content material alone — to raised perceive how adjustments in decomposition dynamics affect the response of soil C storage to shifting hearth regimes.
“We examined how fire impacts soil carbon storage and stability across different biomes and explored ways that fire can be used as a natural climate solution in select biomes to promote soil carbon stability,” Georgiou mentioned.
Reference: “Fire effects on the persistence of soil organic matter and long-term carbon storage” by Adam F. A. Pellegrini, Jennifer Harden, Katerina Georgiou, Kyle S. Hemes, Avni Malhotra, Connor J. Nolan and Robert B. Jackson, 23 December 2021, Nature Geoscience.
DOI: 10.1038/s41561-021-00867-1
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Stanford University additionally contributed to the research. The LLNL portion of the work was funded by the Lawrence Fellow and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development applications.
