The overall objective of this study is to examine the
effects of climate, vegetation, natural (fire) and human-induced disturbance
(harvesting) on soil chemical composition in boreal forest floors and peatlands
as determined by solid-state CPMAS 13C NMR spectroscopy. Analyses of samples from the
Fluxnet-Canada research network, including 17 sites along an east-west national transect from
New Brunswick to British Columbia were carried out using
ramped-cross-polarization (RAMP-CP) on a Bruker Avance 400 spectrometer. Integrated areas of spectral regions
were ordered by non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMS). Preliminary results indicate that
samples clustered together
by vegetation type regardless of their sampling location. Five to 35% of total
soil carbon was mineralized during a one-year incubation at room
temperature. Analyses are underway
to characterize the chemical composition of post-incubation samples.