Response of Soil Respiration, Temperature and Moisture to the Harvest of a Sessile Oak Forest

Forest management, particularly thinning and harvesting measures, has a significant impact on the forest carbon balance. In this study, we investigated the effect of the harvest of a sessile oak forest on soil respiration as a main source of CO2 emissions in forest ecosystems. Soil respiration, temperature and moisture were measured during the two growing seasons, one before and one after the harvest applied on six out of nine studied plots in April 2018. The harvest increased soil temperature by up to 6 degrees C. Soil moisture did not differ between the plots in 2017, but it was higher in the harvested plots compared to the control in 2018. In the first half of the growing season 2018, the difference between the control and harvested plots ranged between 5 and 100 % in proportion while in the second half the differences decreased only up to 5%. Soil respiration ranged between 1.2 and 3.3 mu mol CO2 m(-2)s(-1) during 2017 with no difference between the following variants. In 2018, soil respiration ranged between 1.2 and 7.0 mu mol CO2 m(-2)s(-1) and it tended to be higher in the harvested plots compared to the control. The exception was observed shortly after heavy rainfall on 5th September when soil respiration in the control significantly exceeded that in the harvested plots.