Tree clearing is practised for greater beef production and hence monetary gains from grazing systems of central Queensland. The high rates of clearing in the past and even recently (577, 000 ha/yr during 1999-2001) were mainly to develop land for pastures. The sustainability of cleared pasture systems over the long-term is questioned. Three major types of tree communities i.e. Eucalyptus populnea F. Muell., E. melanophloia F. Muell. and Acacia harpophylla F. Muell. ex. Benth. were selected on one property in central Queensland to quantify the impacts of clearing on pasture production and composition, and soil properties. The impacts were measured over time-since-clearing (recent (&lt5 years), medium (11-13years) and old (&gt30 years)) in unreplicated cleared pastures in comparison to their replicated uncleared/intact woodland pastures of each tree community. Measures of pasture above-ground biomass production on a single property over time-sinceclearing in cleared systems showed that gains were not sustained over the long-term. The difference in response to clearing between tree communities was evident and important to support the future policy decisions. The impact of clearing on soil properties (physicochemical and biological) was confirmed, and explained the lesser availability of nutrients with time of clearing in cleared pastures. The changes in some soil properties underscored the associated risks and changes in ecosystem functions due to clearing. Less litter was produced at cleared than uncleared pastures, but nutrient release was faster at cleared compared to uncleared systems. The overall effect of clearing in terms of pasture and litter production, and major soil parameters were analysed using multivariate analyses.

<p>Soils of Northern Hemisphere forests contain a large part of the global terrestrial carbon (C) pool. Even small changes in this pool can have large impact on atmospheric [CO2] and the global climate. Soil respiration is the largest terrestrial C flux to the atmosphere and can be divided into autotrophic (from roots, mycorrhizal hyphae and associated microbes) and heterotrophic (from decomposers of organic material) respiration. It is therefore crucial to establish how the two components will respond to changing environmental factors. In this thesis I studied the effect of elevated atmospheric [CO2] (+340 ppm, ¹³C-depleted) and elevated air temperature (2.8-3.5 oC) on soil respiration in a whole-tree chamber (WTC) experiment conducted in a boreal Norway spruce forest. In another spruce forest I used multivariate modelling to establish the link between day-to-day variations in soil respiration rates and its δ¹³C, and above and below ground abiotic conditions. In both forests, variation in δ¹³C was used as a marker for autotrophic respiration. A trenching experiment was conducted in the latter forest in order to separate the two components of soil respiration. The potential problems associated with the trenching, increased root decomposition and changed soil moisture conditions were handled by empirical modelling. The WTC experiment showed that elevated [CO2] but not temperature resulted in 48 to 62% increased soil respiration rates. The CO2-induced increase was in absolute numbers relatively insensitive to seasonal changes in soil temperature and data on δ¹³C suggest it mostly resulted from increased autotrophic respiration. From the multivariate modelling we observed a strong link between weather (air temperature and vapour pressure deficit) and the day-to-day variation of soil respiration rate and its δ¹³C. However, the tightness of the link was dependent on good weather for up to a week before the respiration sampling. Changes in soil respiration rates showed a lag to weather conditions of 2-4 days, which was 1-3 days shorter than for the δ¹³C signal. We hypothesised to be due to pressure concentration waves moving in the phloem at higher rates than the solute itself (i.e., the δ¹³C–label). Results from the empirical modelling in the trenching experiment show that autotrophic respiration contributed to about 50% of total soil respiration, had a great day-to-day variation and was correlated to total soil respiration while not to soil temperature or soil moisture. Over the first five months after the trenching, an estimated 45% of respiration from the trenched plots was an artefact of the treatment. Of this, 29% was a water difference effect and 16% resulted from root decomposition. In conclusion, elevated [CO2] caused an increased C flux to the roots but this C was rapidly respired and has probably not caused changes in the C stored in root biomass or in soil organic matter in this N-limited forest. Autotrophic respiration seems to be strongly influenced by the availability of newly produced substrates and rather insensitive to changes in soil temperature. Root trenching artefacts can be compensated for by empirical modelling, an alternative to the sequential root harvesting technique.</p>

Phosphorus is the main limiting nutrient for plant growth in large areas of the world and the availability of phosphorus to plants and microbes can be strongly affected by soil properties. Even though the phosphorus cycle has been studied extensively, much remains unknown about the key processes governing phosphorus availability in different environments. In this thesis the complex dynamics of soil phosphorus and its availability were studied by relating various phosphorus fractions and soil characteristics to microbial respiration kinetics. The soils used represent a range of aluminium, iron, carbon and total phosphorus content, and were located in four different biomes: subtropical forest, warm temperate forest, boreal forest and tundra. The results showed that NaOH extractable phosphorus, a fraction previously considered to be available to plants only over long time scales, can be accessed by microbes in days or weeks. Microbial phosphorus availability was not related to aluminium or iron content in any of the studied systems, not even in highly weathered soils with high aluminium and iron content. This is in contrast with other studies of soils with high sorption capacity and shows the variability of factors that govern phosphorus availability in different environments. In the boreal forest chronosequence, no difference could be seen with age in total phosphorus content or concentrations of occluded phosphorus forms. However, there were lower concentrations of labile phosphorus forms in older systems, which were correlated with a decrease in microbial respiration. This was most likely related to organic matter quality in the system, and not to geochemical factors. Phosphorus availability was linked to differences in topography (water regime) and vegetation in the tundra ecosystems. The results suggest that the availability of phosphorus, both for microbes and plants, was lower on the meadow vegetation sites compared to the two types of heath vegetation. Many factors are important for phosphorus availability in soils, but these results suggest that microbes can access less available phosphorus if not restricted by carbon, and this may be important in regard to forest management practices as well as effects of environmental change.

Impacts of land use and climate change in tropical forests on the global carbon budget are of principal interest in the recent research, as these forests amount to about 48 % of the world’s forested area. Interest has been focused on lowland tropical forests mainly, but tropical montane forests occupy about 20 % of all tropical forests. Soils of tropical montane forests are frequently waterlogged and characterised by high soil organic carbon stocks. Furthermore, along altitudinal gradients, changes in stand structure and net primary production can be observed that have not been fully explained yet. As causes reduced microbial activity and nitrogen turnover in soils of tropical montane forests have been suggested. Against the background of climate change, carbon turnover mechanisms in soils of these forests are of special interest. The present study therefore aimed at determining and quantifying relevant carbon and nitrogen pools as well as nitrogen mineralisation potentials. Furthermore, size, activity, and structure of microbial biomass were characterised. The collected data was supposed to provide basic knowledge on carbon and nitrogen cycling in tropical montane forest soils. Thus, evaluation of the susceptibility of their carbon stocks for climate change as well as nitrogen and carbon limitation of microbial organic matter decomposition was possible. Field work of this study was conducted during 2003–2005 at an altitudinal transect that in- cluded five study sites between 1 050 and 3 060 m amsl. Total soil respiration was recorded biweekly over two years, the contribution of roots to total soil CO2 efflux over one year. Soils of the study sites were sampled twice and biochemical and microbial parameters were determined.

This thesis presents the first modeling study on long-term carbon dynamics for the University of Guelph Elora Agricultural Research Station and the Environment Canada Borden Forest Research Station at the daily and half-hourly time-step. The daily version of the CENTURY (DayCENT) model and the Carbon- and Nitrogen-coupled Canadian Land Surface Scheme (CN-CLASS) model were validated for quantifying the effects of agricultural management and component respiration on the carbon budget. DayCENT indicated that conventional tillage (CT) enhanced the annual heterotrophic respiration relative to no-till (NT) by 38.4, 93.7 and 64.2 g C m-2 yr-1 for corn, soybean and winter wheat, respectively. The seasonal variation of total soil organic carbon (SOC) pool was greater in CT than NT due to tillage effects on carbon transfer from the active surface SOC pool to the active soil SOC pool at a rate of 50-100 g C m-2 yr-1. NT accounted for a 10.7 g C m-2 yr-1 increase in the slow SOC pool (20-year turnover time) at a site in Elora, Ontario, Canada. I found that the plant phenology algorithms used in CN-CLASS were not constructed and validated for crop growth, resulting in a high degree of uncertainty in the simulations. Therefore, I designed and tested a new agricultural module for CN-CLASS. The regression analysis indicated that the new crop module improved the net ecosystem productivity (NEP) simulation for a cornfield, with the coefficient of determination (r2) of annual NEP increasing from 0.51 in the original CN-CLASS to 0.78 in the modified version of the model. I verified CN-CLASS to simulate the dynamics of component respiration for tracing the contributions from litterfall, SOC and root respiration in a deciduous mixedwood forest in Borden, Ontario, Canada. The model estimated that the annual ecosystem CO2 respiration was 1366 g C m-2 yr-1, contributed by heterotrophic respiration (57%), maintenance respiration (37%) and growth respiration (6%). The annual accumulated soil respiration was estimated at 782 g C m-2 yr-1, which was dominated by CO2 emissions from soil organic matter (60%). The base respiration rates required further verification based on field measurements. Based on the verified modeling approach in this thesis, the modeling core of DayCENT can be constructed as an integral platform for Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada National Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Accounting and Verification System. The crop phenological module in CN-CLASS allows us to conduct further agricultural studies concerning global carbon budget and environmental change. The validated respiration algorithms in CN-CLASS would be helpful in developing global biological CO2 transport model for tracing emission sources. / Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada

Soils of Northern Hemisphere forests contain a large part of the global terrestrial carbon (C) pool. Even small changes in this pool can have large impact on atmospheric [CO2] and the global climate. Soil respiration is the largest terrestrial C flux to the atmosphere and can be divided into autotrophic (from roots, mycorrhizal hyphae and associated microbes) and heterotrophic (from decomposers of organic material) respiration. It is therefore crucial to establish how the two components will respond to changing environmental factors. In this thesis I studied the effect of elevated atmospheric [CO2] (+340 ppm, 13C-depleted) and elevated air temperature (2.8-3.5 oC) on soil respiration in a whole-tree chamber (WTC) experiment conducted in a boreal Norway spruce forest. In another spruce forest I used multivariate modelling to establish the link between day-to-day variations in soil respiration rates and its δ13C, and above and below ground abiotic conditions. In both forests, variation in δ13C was used as a marker for autotrophic respiration. A trenching experiment was conducted in the latter forest in order to separate the two components of soil respiration. The potential problems associated with the trenching, increased root decomposition and changed soil moisture conditions were handled by empirical modelling. The WTC experiment showed that elevated [CO2] but not temperature resulted in 48 to 62% increased soil respiration rates. The CO2-induced increase was in absolute numbers relatively insensitive to seasonal changes in soil temperature and data on δ13C suggest it mostly resulted from increased autotrophic respiration. From the multivariate modelling we observed a strong link between weather (air temperature and vapour pressure deficit) and the day-to-day variation of soil respiration rate and its δ13C. However, the tightness of the link was dependent on good weather for up to a week before the respiration sampling. Changes in soil respiration rates showed a lag to weather conditions of 2-4 days, which was 1-3 days shorter than for the δ13C signal. We hypothesised to be due to pressure concentration waves moving in the phloem at higher rates than the solute itself (i.e., the δ13C–label). Results from the empirical modelling in the trenching experiment show that autotrophic respiration contributed to about 50% of total soil respiration, had a great day-to-day variation and was correlated to total soil respiration while not to soil temperature or soil moisture. Over the first five months after the trenching, an estimated 45% of respiration from the trenched plots was an artefact of the treatment. Of this, 29% was a water difference effect and 16% resulted from root decomposition. In conclusion, elevated [CO2] caused an increased C flux to the roots but this C was rapidly respired and has probably not caused changes in the C stored in root biomass or in soil organic matter in this N-limited forest. Autotrophic respiration seems to be strongly influenced by the availability of newly produced substrates and rather insensitive to changes in soil temperature. Root trenching artefacts can be compensated for by empirical modelling, an alternative to the sequential root harvesting technique.

Diss. (sammanfattning). Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksuniv. / Härtill 5 uppsatser.

Lic.-avh. Umeå : Sveriges lantbruksUniversity. / Härtill 2 uppsatser.

Submitted by Christtiane Fernandes Oliveira (chrisnandes20@gmail.com) on 2018-07-13T19:05:50Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Christtiane Fernandes OliveiraFINAL.pdf: 3465129 bytes, checksum: e7b11fae4a9aca45b03ac902ed69de2a (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Cristina Alexandra de Godoy null (cristina@adm.feis.unesp.br) on 2018-07-13T19:15:38Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 oliveira_cf_me_ilha.pdf: 3465129 bytes, checksum: e7b11fae4a9aca45b03ac902ed69de2a (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-13T19:15:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 oliveira_cf_me_ilha.pdf: 3465129 bytes, checksum: e7b11fae4a9aca45b03ac902ed69de2a (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-05-14 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) / Áreas convertidas para florestas plantadas e sistemas silvipastoris (SSPs), além de contribuírem para a sustentabilidade do sistema e promover maior biodiversidade, tem um papel importante na mitigação dos gases do efeito estufa (GEEs). Deste modo, o objetivo do presente trabalho foi avaliar a variabilidade espacial da emissão de CO2 (FCO2) e do estoque de carbono do solo (EstC) em áreas com 30 anos de conversão de lavoura para o sistema silvipastoril (consórcio de aroeira e capim braquiária) e floresta plantada de eucalipto, no município de Selvíria-MS. Foram instaladas duas malhas amostrais, uma de 100 × 100 m contendo 102 pontos na área de eucalipto (EU) e outra com 86 pontos amostrais no sistema silvipastoril (SSP), possibilitando fazer uma estatística mais confiável em termos de variabilidade espacial. A emissão de CO2 do solo foi determinada por meio do sistema LI-8100, juntamente à determinação de temperatura e umidade do solo. Os resultados indicaram que a área de EU obteve a maior média de FCO2 (7,22 mol m-2 s-1), maior valor de EstC (21,75 Mg ha-1), e maior grau de humificação da matéria orgânica (HLIFS), indicando um material mais recalcitrante, se comparada ao SSP. A análise variográfica indicou que o intervalo de dependência espacial do FCO2 para SSP variou de 19,8 a 87,9 m, enquanto na EU os valores variaram de 22,3 a 60,9 m. O FCO2 apresentou melhor correlação espacial com estoque de carbono do solo. Os mapas de FCO2 mantiveram um padrão de variabilidade espacial ao longo do tempo para ambas as áreas avaliadas. / Areas converted to planted forests and silvopastoral systems (SSPs), besides contributing to the sustainability of the system and promoting greater biodiversity, play an important role in the mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Thus, the objective of the present work was to evaluate the spatial variability of CO2 emission (FCO2) and soil carbon stock (EstC) in areas with 30 years of conversion to the silvipastoril system (Myracrodruon urundeuva, consortium and brachiaria grass) and planted forest of eucalyptus, in the municipality of Selvíria-MS. Two sample meshes were installed, one of 100 × 100 m containing 102 points in the eucalyptus (EU) area and the other with 86 sampling points in the silvipastoral system (SSP), making it possible to make a statistic more reliable in terms of spatial variability. The CO2 emission of the soil was determined by the LI-8100 system, together with the determination of soil temperature and humidity. The results indicate that the EU area obtained the highest average FCO2 (7.22 μmol m-2 s-1), a higher value of EstC (21.75 Mg ha-1), and a higher degree of humification of organic matter (HLIFS), indicating a more recalcitrant material, when compared to SSP. The variographic analysis indicated that the spatial dependence range of FCO2 for SSP ranged from 19.8 to 87.9 m, while in the EU the values ranged from 22.3 to 60.9 m. FCO2 showed better spatial correlation with soil carbon stock. The FCO2 maps maintained a spatial variability pattern over time for both areas evaluated. / FAPESP: 16/03861-5

Orientador: Alan Rodrigo Panosso / Resumo: Áreas convertidas para florestas plantadas e sistemas silvipastoris (SSPs), além de contribuírem para a sustentabilidade do sistema e promover maior biodiversidade, tem um papel importante na mitigação dos gases do efeito estufa (GEEs). Deste modo, o objetivo do presente trabalho foi avaliar a variabilidade espacial da emissão de CO2 (FCO2) e do estoque de carbono do solo (EstC) em áreas com 30 anos de conversão de lavoura para o sistema silvipastoril (consórcio de aroeira e capim braquiária) e floresta plantada de eucalipto, no município de Selvíria-MS. Foram instaladas duas malhas amostrais, uma de 100 × 100 m contendo 102 pontos na área de eucalipto (EU) e outra com 86 pontos amostrais no sistema silvipastoril (SSP), possibilitando fazer uma estatística mais confiável em termos de variabilidade espacial. A emissão de CO2 do solo foi determinada por meio do sistema LI-8100, juntamente à determinação de temperatura e umidade do solo. Os resultados indicaram que a área de EU obteve a maior média de FCO2 (7,22 mol m-2 s-1), maior valor de EstC (21,75 Mg ha-1), e maior grau de humificação da matéria orgânica (HLIFS), indicando um material mais recalcitrante, se comparada ao SSP. A análise variográfica indicou que o intervalo de dependência espacial do FCO2 para SSP variou de 19,8 a 87,9 m, enquanto na EU os valores variaram de 22,3 a 60,9 m. O FCO2 apresentou melhor correlação espacial com estoque de carbono do solo. Os mapas de FCO2 mantiveram um padrão de variabilidade espac... (Resumo completo, clicar acesso eletrônico abaixo) / Abstract: Areas converted to planted forests and silvopastoral systems (SSPs), besides contributing to the sustainability of the system and promoting greater biodiversity, play an important role in the mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Thus, the objective of the present work was to evaluate the spatial variability of CO2 emission (FCO2) and soil carbon stock (EstC) in areas with 30 years of conversion to the silvipastoril system (Myracrodruon urundeuva, consortium and brachiaria grass) and planted forest of eucalyptus, in the municipality of Selvíria-MS. Two sample meshes were installed, one of 100 × 100 m containing 102 points in the eucalyptus (EU) area and the other with 86 sampling points in the silvipastoral system (SSP), making it possible to make a statistic more reliable in terms of spatial variability. The CO2 emission of the soil was determined by the LI-8100 system, together with the determination of soil temperature and humidity. The results indicate that the EU area obtained the highest average FCO2 (7.22 μmol m-2 s-1), a higher value of EstC (21.75 Mg ha-1), and a higher degree of humification of organic matter (HLIFS), indicating a more recalcitrant material, when compared to SSP. The variographic analysis indicated that the spatial dependence range of FCO2 for SSP ranged from 19.8 to 87.9 m, while in the EU the values ranged from 22.3 to 60.9 m. FCO2 showed better spatial correlation with soil carbon stock. The FCO2 maps maintained a spatial variability pattern ove... (Complete abstract click electronic access below) / Mestre