Canberra

Seminar Abstract

Thursday 17 June 2010
10.30am (AEST time)
CSIRO Pye Laboratory, Canberra

William Massman

USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fort Collins, CO

Impacts of slash-pile burns on soils: A Manitou Experimental Forest Mystery

Experimental slash-pile burns were performed at Manitou Experimental Forest (Rocky Mountains of central Colorado) during January 2002 and April 2004. Data obtained at these burn sites during spring and summer of 2005 suggested a surprising change in soil thermal conductivity, but no change in soil bulk density. Investigating the possible consequences of these changes to the thermal environment of the soil is relatively straightforward, and they appear to be significant and long-term. But, uncovering an answer (or testable hypothesis) to the mystery of why and what may have happened to the soil during these burns is far more involved, and required a unique set of observations that included (a) the first measurements ever made of the changes in soil CO2 during a slash-pile burn, (b) the first 3-d X-ray tomographs of soils affected by severe heating, (c) a 24-hour weenie roast (campfire), (d) the clue that not all black ash is necessarily carbon, and (e) rarely employed x-ray diffraction methods and thin-section photographs to investigate the changes in the soil’s mineralogical and mircomorphological properties that result from severe soil heating.

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Location:
CSIRO = Pye Laboratory, Black Mountain, Canberra

Last updated 11/06/10