Losses of Soil Carbon upon a Fire on a Drained Forested Raised Bog

Abstract

We studied the consequences of a fire that affected 29 ha of a drained forested raised bog in Tver oblast, Central European Russia. The drainage network consisted of open 1-m-deep ditches with 60 to 160 m ditch spacing. The groundwater level (GWL) varied within the studied drained bog. We used the method of assessing the loss of soil carbon (C) based on the difference between the ash concentration in the burnt peat of the upper layer and underlying unburnt layers. The carbon loss was higher near the drainage ditches than in the sites remote from ditches. The sample median values of carbon loss (kg C/m²) were estimated at 0.37 near the drainage ditches and at 0.22 for the remote sites with a distance of 160 m between ditches. They increased to 2.23 and 0.79 near and far from the drainage ditches for 106 m ditch spacing, and ranged from 1.13 to 2.10 near the drainage ditches and were equal to 0.45 at the remote sites for 60 m ditch spacing. The maximum loss of C was at the bog margin with the 70-cm-deep GWL; the sample median was equal to 2.97 kg C/m². The results obtained for C loss from the wildfire on the raised bog agree with the estimates obtained by other authors (1.45–4.90 kg C/m²) and confirm the importance of taking such loss into account in the estimates of the carbon budget of peat soils (Histosols).