Post-fire Recovery of Soil Organic Layer Carbon in Canadian Boreal Forests, 2015-2018

This dataset provides site moisture, soil organic layer thickness, soil organic carbon, nonvascular plant functional group, stand dominance, ecozone, time-after-fire, jack pine proportion, and deciduous proportion for 511 forested plots spanning ~140,000 km2 across two ecozones of the Northwest Territories, Canada (NWT). The plots were established during 2015-2018 across 41 wildfire scars and unburned areas (no burn history prior to 1965), with 317 plots in the Plains and 194 plots in the Shield regions. At each plot, two adjacent 30-m transects were established 2 m apart, running north from the plot origin. Soil organic layer (SOL) depth (cm) was measured every 3 m and the mean was taken from the 10 measurements to calculate a plot-level SOL thickness. Three soil organic layer profiles were destructively sampled at 0, 12, and 24 m using a corer that was custom designed for NWT soils. Within the transects, all stems taller than 1.37 m were identified to species to calculate tree density (stems / m2). Nonvascular plant percent cover was identified to functional group at five, 1-m2 quadrats spaced 6 m apart along the belt transect. A subset of 2,067 of 5,137 total increments from 1,803 profiles from 421 plots were analyzed for total percent C using a CHN analyzer. Time-after-fire was established using fire history records. For older plots where no known fire history is recorded, tree age was used. Data are for the period 2015-06-11 to 2018-08-24 and are provided in comma-separated values (CSV) format.

本数据集提供了加拿大西北地区（NWT）两个生态区约140,000平方公里范围内511个森林样地的场地湿度、土壤有机层厚度、土壤有机碳含量、非维管植物功能群、林分优势度、生态区、火灾后时间、黑松比例和落叶比例。这些样地于2015年至2018年之间建立，涵盖了41处野火疤痕和未燃烧区域（1965年之前无燃烧历史），其中平原地区有317个样地，盾地区有194个样地。在每个样地中，建立了两个相邻的30米样带，样带间距2米，自样地起点向北延伸。以每3米为一间隔，测量土壤有机层（SOL）的深度（厘米），并从10次测量中取平均值以计算样地级别的SOL厚度。使用专为NWT土壤定制的钻探器，在0米、12米和24米处破坏性地采集了三个土壤有机层剖面。在样带内，识别了所有高于1.37米的高茎植物至物种，以计算树木密度（株数/平方米）。在样带上的五个、面积为1平方米的样方中，每隔6米识别非维管植物的覆盖率至功能群。从421个样地中的1803个剖面和总共5137个增量中，选取了2067个增量进行分析，使用CHN分析仪测定总碳含量。火灾后时间通过火灾历史记录确定。对于没有记录已知火灾历史的较老样地，使用树木年龄。数据覆盖期为2015年6月11日至2018年8月24日，并以逗号分隔值（CSV）格式提供。