Assessment of Carbon Removal with Soil Water in the Dominant Types of Forest in Bryansk Poles’e

The problem of assessing carbon fluxes and pools in forests is acute due to climate change and contribution of forests to carbon reserves. The papers provides a comparative assessment of carbon ingress with atmospheric precipitation and leaching the dissolved organic carbon from soils under coniferous–deciduous forests of different types on sandy soil-forming deposits. The dominant types of coniferous–broadleaved forests of the Bryansk region, i.e., dwarf shrub–green moss pine forests, composite boreal–nemoral herbaceous pine forests and polydominant broadleaved nemoral-forb spruce forests are the objects of study. On average, over a three-year-long observation period (2016–2019), the carbon ingress with rain and snow was 60 ± 4 kg C/ha per year in shrub–green moss and composite pine forests; this turned out to be higher than in coniferous-broadleaved forests, where the carbon input was 47 ± 2 kg C/ha per year. The removal of organic carbon from organic horizons in polydominant broadleaved forests was four times lower (14 ± 4 kg C/ha per year) on average than in dwarf shrub–green moss pine forests specified by a thick litter (56 ± 22 kg C/ha per year), and 2.5 times lower than in composite pine forests (36 ± 12 kg C/ha per year). The cases of leaching organic carbon from the lower mineral horizons were scarce for different types of coniferous-deciduous forests and varied on average from 6 to 12 kg C/(ha year). The distribution of dissolved organic carbon in the soil profile shows a more efficient carbon fixation in the mineral part of soil profile in pine forests than in polydominant broadleaved forests.