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.

本数据集提供加拿大西北地区（NWT）两个生态区域，覆盖约14万平方公里范围内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、黑松比例以及落叶比例等信息。这些样地于2015至2018年间设立于41处野火疤痕和未燃烧区域（1965年之前无燃烧历史），其中平原地区设有317个样地，而盾地区设有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，自样地起源向北延伸。土壤有机层（SOL）深度（厘米）每隔3米测量一次，取10次测量的平均值以计算样地级别的SOL厚度。使用专门为NWT土壤设计的钻芯，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，识别并鉴定了所有高于1.37米的树干至物种，以计算树密度（株数/平方米）。非维管植物覆盖率按功能群鉴定，在沿样带间隔6米设置的五处、1平方米的样方中完成。从421个样地中1,803个剖面和5,137个总增长量的子集中，选取了2,067个样本，使用CHN分析仪分析了总碳含量。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，则使用树木年龄。数据覆盖了2015年6月11日至2018年8月24日期间，并以逗号分隔值（CSV）格式提供。