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Soil organic carbon dynamics: variability with depth in forested and deforested soils under pasture in Costa Rica

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Abstract

Dynamics of soil organic carbon (SOC) inchronosequences of soils below forests that had beenreplaced by grazed pastures 3–25 years ago, wereinvestigated for two contrasting soil types (AndicHumitropept and Eutric Hapludand) in the Atlantic Zoneof Costa Rica. By forest clearing and subsequentestablishment of pastures, photosynthesis changes froma C-3 to a C-4 pathway. The accompanying changes inC-input and its δ13C and 14Csignals, were used to quantify SOC dynamics. C-input from rootturnover at a pasture site was measured by sequentialharvesting and 14C-pulse labelling. With aspatial resolution of 5 cm, data on total SOC,δ13C and δ14C of soil profileswere interpreted with a model that distinguishes threepools of SOC: ‘active’ C, ‘slow’ C and ‘passive’ C,each with a 1-st order decomposition rate(ka, ks and kp). The modelincludes carbon isotope fractionation and depth-dependentdecomposition rates. Transport of C between soillayers was described as a diffusion process, whichaccounts for physical and biotic mixing processes.

Calibrated diffusion coefficients were 0.42 cm2yr-1 for the Humitropept and 3.97 cm2yr-1 for the Hapludand chronosequence.Diffusional transport alone was insufficient foroptimal simulation; it had to be augmented bydepth-dependent decomposition rates to explain thedynamics of SOC, δ13C andδ14C. Decomposition rates decreasedstrongly with depth. Upon increased diffusion,differences between calibrated decomposition rates ofSOC fractions between surface soils and subsoilsdiminished, but the concept of depth-dependentdecomposition had to be retained, to obtain smallresiduals between observed and simulated data. At areference depth of 15–20 cm ks was 90 yr-1in the Humitropept and 146 yr-1 in the Hapludand.Slow C contributed most to total organic C in surfacesoils, whereas passive C contributed most below 40 cmdepth. After 18–25 years of pasture, net loss of C was2180 g C m-2 for the Hapludand and 150 g m-2for the Humitropept soil.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science and Geology, Wageningen Agricultural University, P.O. Box 37, 6700 AA, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Douwe van Dam & Nico van Breemen

  2. Institut füur Bodenkunde und Waldernährung, Georg-August Universität Göttingen, 37077, Göttingen, Germany

    Edzo Veldkamp

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  1. Douwe van Dam
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  2. Nico van Breemen
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van Dam, D., van Breemen, N. & Veldkamp, E. Soil organic carbon dynamics: variability with depth in forested and deforested soils under pasture in Costa Rica. Biogeochemistry 39, 343–375 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1005880031579

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