Forest Soil Carbon and Climate Changes

Forest soil carbon is an important component of the global carbon cycle, and the changes of its accumulation and decomposition, stabilization and destabilization directly affect the atmospheric CO₂ concentration and global warming. Besides that, forest soil carbon plays a crucial role in forest ecosystems including nutrient provision, carbon sequestration, water regulation, soil structuring and biodiversity promotion. Due to the crucial importance of soil carbon storage to climate regulation and stability of forest ecosystem functions, scientists have devoted a significant amount of attention to the topic over the last decade. Central to the theme are questions concerning the temperature dependence of C mineralization and how this temperature sensitivity depends on litter quality, and how forest stand density alters temperature sensitivity and stability of soil organic matter to accelerated input of fresh organic matter (primability). Therefore, the scope of the Special Issue “Forest Soil Carbon and Climate Changes” was to summarize recent findings from different geographic locations, tackling these issues that are important to society. We invited papers dealing with temperature sensitivity of C mineralization, priming of soil organic matter, and tree species and stand density effect on soil C storage and turnover processes. In addition, N effects on C storage and fluxes were welcome. The papers could be based on original data, and reviews and meta-analysis were also considered.

The Issue includes 15 papers; based on the first author affiliation, the papers originate from Russia (7), China (3), Taiwan (2), Japan (1), South Korea (1) and Canada (1). Several papers were dealing with vegetation effects on soil organic matter [1,2,3,4,5]. Respiration as the second most important process of global carbon cycles was considered by researchers from several countries [5,6,7,8,9,10], including also research dealing with the temperature sensitivity of the respiration process [8,9]. Two papers concentrated on microbial metabolism in forest soils [5,11]. Climate change [12] and forest fires [13] effects on peat formation were also reported. Two papers were dealing with methodological issues of soil organic matter—excitation of soil organic carbon caused the organic acids [14] and the influence of acid rains on lignin and total soil organic matter stability [15].