Human impacts on soil carbon dynamics of deep-rooted Amazonian forests and effect of land use change on the carbon cycle in Amazon soils. Annual report No. 1, 1 September 1991-30 August 1992

Technical Report · Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 1992

OSTI ID:6661380

Nepstad, D; Stone, T; Davidson, E; Trumbore, S E

The main objective of these NASA-funded projects is to improve our understanding of land-use impacts on soil carbon dynamics in the Amazon Basin. Soil contains approximately one half of tropical forest carbon stocks, yet the fate of this carbon following forest impoverishment is poorly studied. Our mechanistics approach draws on numerous techniques for measuring soil carbon outputs, inputs, and turnover time in the soils of adjacent forest and pasture ecosystems at our research site in Paragominas, state of Para, Brazil. We are scaling up from this site-specific work by analyzing Basin-wide patterns in rooting depth and rainfall seasonality, the two factors that we believe should explain much of the variation in tropical soil carbons dynamics. In this report, we summarize ongoing measurements at our Paragominas study site, progress in employing new field data to understand soil C dynamics, and some surprising results from our regional, scale-up work.

• Research Organization: Woods Hole Research Center, MA (United States)
• OSTI ID: 6661380
• Report Number(s): N-93-16748; NASA-CR-191219; NAS-1.26:191219; CNN: NAGW-2750
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
CARBON CYCLE
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
DEFORESTATION
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS
LAND USE
BRAZIL
CARBON
CARBON SINKS
DYNAMICS
ECOLOGICAL CONCENTRATION
ECOSYSTEMS
FORESTS
NASA
RAIN
SCALING
SOILS
SOUTH AMERICA
ATMOSPHERIC PRECIPITATIONS
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
ELEMENTS
EVALUATION
LATIN AMERICA
MECHANICS
NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
NONMETALS
SINKS
US ORGANIZATIONS
540210* - Environment
Terrestrial- Basic Studies- (1990-)
540220 - Environment
Terrestrial- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport- (1990-)