SRS researchers are working with Southern Region National Forest System collaborators on a long-term soil productivity site in the Croatan National Forest in North Carolina. With help from other units, Station research chemist Felipe Sanchez has charted the decay of slash from logging over time. He has also shown that there is a large short-lived “pulse” of soil organic matter after harvest—an important component of carbon sequestration to be factored in when evaluating the productivity of plantation rotations.

John Seiler, forestry professor and tree physiologist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, is an important collaborator on research at SETRES and at the Cross Carbon site featured in the story on page 7. Of special interest is the study conducted by Seiler and SRS research biological scientist Chris Maier that examined soil respiration in different pine plantations from stand establishment to full rotation age. Conducted in the Piedmont (low-organic matter sites) and on the Coastal Plain (high-organic matter sites), the research showed that although the high-organic matter sites initially lost more carbon through soil respiration, by full rotation age both types of sites had similar carbon losses, presumably because root respiration was the major contributor of carbon.