Details of Award
NERC Reference : NE/T008040/1
Stabilisation of pyrogenic carbon in tropical grasslands (SPECTRAL)
Grant Award
- Principal Investigator:
- Professor J Subke, University of Stirling, Biological and Environmental Sciences
- Co-Investigator:
- Dr PL Ascough, Scottish Universities Env Research Cen, SUERC
- Co-Investigator:
- Professor KA Abernethy, University of Stirling, Biological and Environmental Sciences
- Grant held at:
- University of Stirling, Biological and Environmental Sciences
- Science Area:
- Atmospheric
- Terrestrial
- Overall Classification:
- Panel C
- ENRIs:
- Biodiversity
- Environmental Risks and Hazards
- Global Change
- Natural Resource Management
- Science Topics:
- Climate & Climate Change
- Biogeochemical Cycles
- Ecosystem management
- Soil carbon
- Ecosystem Scale Processes
- Soil science
- Abstract:
- Every year, fires burn more than 500 million ha of the land surface on Earth. These fires leave residues of partially burned biomass which are deposited on the soil surface as "pyrogenic carbon" (PyC). It is estimated that as much as 114 to 379 Tg of PyC are added to soils each year, and global models predict that fire frequency and intensity will increase in many areas. Much of this PyC is deposited on to the soil surface and subsequently incorporated into deeper layers, so that it can account for as much as 50% of total carbon stored in soils in some fire prone ecosystems such as tropical savannahs. Storage of pyrogenic carbon in soils matters a lot to the way in which natural and managed ecosystems interact with the global climate system. PyC has an inherently slow turnover once it is in the soil, meaning that it will persist much longer than organic matter deposited on or in soils that have not been exposed to fire. Remarkably, however, we largely ignore the fate and overall contribution of PyC to global carbon cycling. This is due to the fact that the scientific community so far only has a rudimentary understanding of what determines PyC distribution and turnover in soils. There have been significant advances in understanding the role of charred biomass added to soil as an agricultural practice, and we have a reasonable understanding of these systems and how it interacts with soil organisms and physical factors. However, we require a much better understanding of processes underlying the changes of PyC particles, and stabilisation of carbon introduced to the soil after fire, in order to model current PyC dynamics, and be able to forecast these under future climates. Particularly biological processes, such as the role of invertebrate soil animals and different groups of soil microbial organisms have so far not received sufficient attention. We propose a programme of research directed at creating a novel soil-PyC model that can be linked to regional and global carbon-climate models, which so far ignore PyC. We will achieve this through a number of experiments based in a tropical savannah system in Gabon. This provides an ideal experimental set-up, as these fire prone systems have a significant abundance of PyC in the soil profile, and we will be able to link to a long-term fire manipulation field experiments in the Lope National Park. Using targeted soil coring for contrasting fire return intervals, combined with the determination of the age of PyC (usingnatural 14C abundance) across the profile, we will be able to derive residence times of this stable soil carbon reservoir. By using isotopically labelled PyC (based on plants grown under enrichment with 13C, a non-harmful, stable isotope of carbon), we aim to gain a better mechanistic and quantitative understanding of soil PyC dynamics. This approach is linked to manipulations of soil animal presence, as these are hypothesised to have a significant influence over the distribution and turnover of PyC in the soil. Insights from the isotopic tracer study will be used to develop a novel soilorganic matter model to incorporate PyC dynamics for the first time, We will be able to parameterise this new model with our experimental data and validate simulated turnover against our independently assessed turnover time of PyC pools.
- NERC Reference:
- NE/T008040/1
- Grant Stage:
- Awaiting Event/Action
- Scheme:
- Standard Grant FEC
- Grant Status:
- Active
- Programme:
- Standard Grant
This grant award has a total value of £594,465
FDAB - Financial Details (Award breakdown by headings)
| DI - Other Costs | Indirect - Indirect Costs | DA - Investigators | DI - Equipment | DA - Estate Costs | DI - Staff | DA - Other Directly Allocated | DI - T&S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| £63,324 | £173,628 | £67,771 | £23,998 | £46,230 | £136,004 | £40,183 | £43,331 |
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