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Soil carbon pools in Swiss forests show legacy effects from historic forest litter raking

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Abstract

Globally, forest soils contain twice as much carbon as forest vegetation. Consequently, natural and anthropogenic disturbances affecting carbon accumulation in forest soils can alter regional to global carbon balance. In this study, we evaluate the effects of historic litter raking on soil carbon stocks, a former forest use which used to be widespread throughout Europe for centuries. We estimate, for Switzerland, the carbon sink potential in current forest soils due to recovery from past litter raking (‘legacy effect’). The year 1650 was chosen as starting year for litter raking, with three different end years (1875/1925/1960) implemented for this forest use in the biogeochemical model LPJ-GUESS. The model was run for different agricultural and climatic zones separately. Number of cattle, grain production and the area of wet meadow have an impact on the specific demand for forest litter. The demand was consequently calculated based on historical statistical data on these factors. The results show soil carbon pools to be reduced by an average of 17 % after 310 years of litter raking and legacy effects were still visible 130 years after abandonment of this forest use (2 % average reduction). We estimate the remaining carbon sink potential in Swiss forest due to legacy effects from past litter raking to amount to 158,000 tC. Integrating historical data into biogeochemical models provides insight into the relevance of past land-use practices. Our study underlines the importance of considering potentially long-lasting effects of such land use practices for carbon accounting.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable inputs. We appreciate the development of LPJ-GUESS by Ben Smith and Paul Miller at the Ecosystem Modelling and Biodiversity Studies Group at the Department of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences, Lund University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Research Unit Landscape Dynamics, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Urs Gimmi, Benjamin Poulter & Matthias Bürgi

  2. Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et l’Environement (LSCE), Gif sur Yvette, France

    Benjamin Poulter

  3. Forest Ecology, Department of Environmental Sciences, Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH, Universitätsstrasse 16, 8092, Zurich, Switzerland

    Annett Wolf & Hanspeter Portner

  4. Research Unit Soil Sciences, Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL, Zürcherstrasse 111, 8903, Birmensdorf, Switzerland

    Pascale Weber

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  1. Urs Gimmi
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  4. Hanspeter Portner
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Correspondence to Urs Gimmi.

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Gimmi, U., Poulter, B., Wolf, A. et al. Soil carbon pools in Swiss forests show legacy effects from historic forest litter raking. Landscape Ecol 28, 835–846 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-012-9778-4

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