Assessing the sensitivity of various soils of a temperate forest to an increase of biomass exportation

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Calvaruso, Christophe, C. | Nys, Claude, C. | Didier, Serge | Redon, Paul-Olivier | Turpault, Marie-Pierre, M.-P.

Edité par CCSD -

International audience. Forests provide many benefits and services to society, including clean water, recreation, wildlife habitat, carbon storage, and a variety of forest products. Because nutrient availability is a major driver of forest stability, intensification of wood exportation and notably small woods (nutrient-rich organs) for bio-energy, threatens forest soil fertility and in consequence ecosystem functioning. Maintaining the management of forests in a sustainable way, while adapting to global change is a big challenge. Here, we use field and modeling studies to assess the relative sensitivity of different types of soils face to increase of biomass exportation in a beech mature forest of the North East of France. The study site with a surface area of 252 km2 is characterized by a great diversity of soils representative of the region, i.e., rendosol, rendisol, calcisol, brunisols, and alocrisols. To achieve this objective, we used a combination of field measurements of soil properties and a mass balance modeling of nutrient dynamics in soils. In this study, we clearly demonstrated that intensification of biomass exportation (wood-energy practice) may drastically reduce soil mineral fertility, even in soils reputed to be nutrient-rich, leading in term to nutrient deficiencies (mainly phosphorus and potassium), and to stand decline for most of the studied soils. In consequence, the choice of forest management (level of biomass exportation, species...) must be reasoned in adequacy with the available soil resources in nutrients, which depends on soil properties. These strategies appear to be more important in a context of global change.

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