The effects of fire on soil carbon storage in southern

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the future work and stated research gap and abstract of the source papers, classified as general, drawn from work published between 2015 and 2026, spanning 3 journals. Those papers have been cited 34 times in total.

Supporting evidence — 4 representative gaps

• Fire frequency differentially affects carbon pools and pyrogenic organic matter in a South African montane grassland (2026) · Plant and Soil · doi

  This study used samples from 0–5  cm and 5–15  cm from plots that were treated with annual, bien- nial, quinquennial and infrequent spring-burn treat- ments. Future studies could continue and expand this research by including seasonality and deeper soil sample depths. The burning season significantly influences the growth of vegetation (Trollope 2009) and the effect of fire on SOC (Findlay et  al. 2022). Therefore, it would be relevant to also look at the effect of season of burn on carbon distribution in soils. Regarding the depth of sampling, Ward et  al. (2016) reported considerable carbon stocks in British mesic grassland soils at depths of 30 cm to 100 cm, with significant effects of management. This poten- tially suggests an important research gap for the effects of fire regimes on soil C to depths greater than those examined here. Carbon sequestration is cur- rently considered to be a climate mitigation option (Lavallee et al. 2019; Veldman et al. 2015; Viret and Grand 2019). However, the long-term effects of fire on soil carbon storage (and its implication for climate change) remains poorly understood. Fire exclusion policies have potentially harmed stable carbon stor- age (Gao et  al. 2024), therefore further researching the soil carbon storage potential as a result of fire will therefore be an important direction for future studies (Lavallee et al. 2019; Rumpel et al. 2020).

  generalfuture workevidence 5/5
  Keywords: carbon fire soil depths effects burn future season effect soils important climate lavallee storage used
• Is soil carbon sequestration overestimated in carbon footprint accounting? (2026) · Carbon Footprints · doi

  The effectiveness of soil carbon sequestration as a climate mitigation strategy is uncertain due to biophysical constraints. There is a need to better understand the implications of these constraints for carbon footprint accounting.

  generalstated research gapevidence 5/5
  Keywords: effectiveness soil carbon sequestration climate mitigation strategy uncertain
• Burn severity alters peatland moss water availability: implications for post‐fire recovery (2015) · Ecohydrology · cited 34× · doi

  Abstract Wildfire is the largest disturbance affecting northern peatlands; however, little is known about how burn severity (organic soil depth of burn) alters post‐fire hydrological conditions that control the recovery of keystone peatland mosses (i.

  generalabstractevidence 4/5
  Keywords: burn abstract wildfire largest disturbance affecting northern peatlands little known severity organic soil depth alters
• Fire frequency differentially affects carbon pools and pyrogenic organic matter in a South African montane grassland (2026) · Plant and Soil · doi

  The effects of fire on soil carbon storage in southern African grasslands remain poorly understood. There is a need to investigate how fire frequency influences the distribution of soil organic carbon pools in these ecosystems.

  generalstated research gapevidence 3/5
  Keywords: effects fire soil carbon storage southern african grasslands

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