Soil carbon and belowground carbon balance of a short‐rotation coppice: assessments from three different approaches

Uncertainty in soil carbon (C) fluxes across different land‐use transitions is an issue that needs to be addressed for the further deployment of perennial bioenergy crops. A large‐scale short‐rotation coppice ( SRC ) site with poplar ( Populus ) and willow ( Salix ) was established to examine the land‐use transitions of arable and pasture to bioenergy. Soil C pools, output fluxes of soil CO 2 , CH 4 , dissolved organic carbon ( DOC ) and volatile organic compounds, as well as input fluxes from litter fall and from roots, were measured over a 4‐year period, along with environmental parameters. Three approaches were used to estimate changes in the soil C. The largest C pool in the soil was the soil organic carbon ( SOC ) pool and increased after four years of SRC from 10.9 to 13.9 kg C m −2 . The belowground woody biomass (coarse roots) represented the second largest C pool, followed by the fine roots (Fr). The annual leaf fall represented the largest C input to the soil, followed by weeds and Fr. After the first harvest, we observed a very large C input into the soil from high Fr mortality. The weed inputs decreased as trees grew older and bigger. Soil respiration averaged 568.9 g C m −2  yr −1 . Leaching of DOC increased over the three years from 7.9 to 14.5 g C m −2 . The pool‐based approach indicated an increase of 3360 g C m −2 in the SOC pool over the 4‐year period, which was high when compared with the −27 g C m −2 estimated by the flux‐based approach and the −956 g C m −2 of the combined eddy‐covariance + biometric approach. High uncertainties were associated to the pool‐based approach. Our results suggest using the C flux approach for the assessment of the short‐/medium‐term SOC balance at our site, while SOC pool changes can only be used for long‐term C balance assessments.