Spatial Heterogeneity in a Managed Forest in the Missouri Ozarks

1
Spatial Heterogeneity in a Managed Forest in the
Missouri Ozarks

• Rachel Henderson, Qinglin Li, Jiquan Chen
• Department of Earth, Ecological and Environmental
  Sciences
• The University of Toledo
• Randy Jensen
• Missouri Department of Conservation

2
Acknowledgements

• Funding Missouri Department of Conservation
• Qinglin Li, Jiquan Chen, and Xiaoli Cheng
• Field Assistants Taylor Troiani, Lori Schimtz,
  and Charity Barnes
• LEES Lab members

3
Questions

• Does timber harvest treatment alter soil
  respiration rate spatial heterogeneity?
• Does the temporal heterogeneity of soil
  respiration in a managed forest change?

4
Soil Respiration Heterogeneity

• Understanding nutrient and SOM dynamics
• Assessing the contribution of soil respiration in
  global carbon budget
• Guiding sampling design decisions

Stoyan et al. 2000
5
Spatial / Temporal Distribution

• Defined by the overlapping distributions of
  substrates, soil physical conditions, soil
  organisms, temperature and moisture conditions
  (Stoyan et al. 2000)
• Determined by geostatistics (a tool to describe
  spatial phenomenon)

6
Semivariogram
Global Variance
Microscale Variance Error
Patch size
(Brosenbrock 2005)
7
MOFEP
8
Transects
NHM
500m
UAM EAM
300m
9
Equipment
Allegro Deleted valueslt10
EGM4 Deleted valuesgt5
10
Nugget 2004
11
Nugget 2005
12
Sill 2004
13
Sill 2005
14
SRR Range 2004
15
SRR Range 2005
16
Leaf Depth Range 2005
17
Temperature Range 2004
18
Temperature Range 2005
19
Moisture Content Range 2004
20
Moisture Content Range 2005
21

• Soil temperature and moisture may explain season
  variation
• Root biomass, microbial biomass, litter amount,
  soil organic carbon, soil N, cation exchange
  capacity, soil bulk density, soil porosity, pH
  and site topography might explain spatial
  variation (Epron et al. 2004)

22
NHM 2004
23
NHM 2005
24
EAM 2004
25
EAM 2005
26
UAM 2004
27
UAM 2005
28
Conclusions

• Soil respiration rate increased in 2005
• Harvesting decreased spatial heterogeneity
• Litter depth explained this decrease