Fine root biomass and turnover in southern taiga estimated by root inclusion nets

Lukac, M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8535-6334 and Godbold, D. L. (2010) Fine root biomass and turnover in southern taiga estimated by root inclusion nets. Plant and Soil, 331 (1-2). pp. 505-513. ISSN 0032-079X doi: 10.1007/s11104-009-0271-z

Abstract/Summary

Fine roots play an important part in forest carbon, nutrient and water cycles. The turnover of fine roots constitutes a major carbon input to soils. Estimation of fine root turnover is difficult, labour intensive and is often compounded by artefacts created by soil disturbance. In this work, an alternative approach of using inclusion nets installed in an undisturbed soil profile was used to measure fine root production and was compared to the in-growth core method. There was no difference between fine root production estimated by the two methods in three southern taiga sites with contrasting soil conditions and tree species composition in the Central Forest State Biosphere Reserve, Russia. Expressed as annual production over standing biomass, Norway spruce fine root turnover was in the region of 0.10 to 0.24 y-1. The inclusion net technique is suitable for field based assessment of fine root production. There are several advantages over the in-growth core method, due to non-disturbance of the soil profile and its potential for very high rate of replication.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/18387
Identification Number/DOI	10.1007/s11104-009-0271-z
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Agriculture, Policy and Development > Department of Crop Science Interdisciplinary centres and themes > Soil Research Centre
Uncontrolled Keywords	Fine root production; Fine root turnover; Boreal forest; Norway spruce
Publisher	Springer Verlag
Publisher Statement	The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com
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