Dynamics of soil carbon in a beechwood chronosequence forest

Accurate estimates of forest soil organic matter (OM) are now crucial to predictions of global C cycling. This work addresses soil C stocks and dynamics throughout a managed beechwood chronosequence (28–197 years old, Normandy, France). Throughout this rotation, we investigated the variation patterns of (i) C stocks in soil and humic epipedon, (ii) macro-morphological characteristics of humic epipedon, and (iii) mass, C content and C-to-N ratio in physical fractions of humic epipedon. The fractions isolated were large debris (>2000 μm), coarse particular OM (cPOM, 200–2000 μm), fine particular OM (fPOM, 50–200 μm) and the mineral associated OM (MaOM, <50 μm).