Soil carbon pools and fluxes in urban ecosystems

Richard Pouyat; P. Groffman; Ian Yesilonis; L. Hernandez

doi:10.1016/s0269-7491(01)00263-9

Treesearch

Soil carbon pools and fluxes in urban ecosystems

Informally Refereed

Authors:

Richard Pouyat, P. Groffman, Ian Yesilonis, L. Hernandez

Year:

2002

Type:

Scientific Journal

Station:

Northern Research Station

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1016/s0269-7491(01)00263-9

Source:

Environmental Pollution. 116: S107-S118.

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Abstract

The transformation of landscapes from non-urban to urban land use has the potential to greatly modify soil carbon (C) pools and fluxes. For urban ecosystems, very little data exists to assess whether urbanization leads to an increase or decrease in soil C pools. We analyzed three data sets to assess the potential for urbanization to affect soil organic C. These included surface (0-10 cm) soil C data from unmanaged forests along an urban rural gradient, data from "made" soils (1 m depth) from five different cities, and surface (0-15 cm) soil data of several land-use types in the city of Baltimore. Along the urban-rural land-use gradient, we found that soil organic matter concentration in the surface 10 cm varied significantly (P=0.001).

Keywords

soil organic carbon, anthropogenic soils, urban soils, human modified soils, Baltimore Ecosystem Study

Citation

Pouyat, R.; Groffman, P.; Yesilonis, I; Hernandez, L. 2002. Soil carbon pools and fluxes in urban ecosystems. Environmental Pollution. 116: S107-S118.