Soil Carbon Distribution In Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

A soil resource inventory of Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) was completed in 2007.  The GSMNP is located in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina and covers an area of approximately 210,000 hectares.  Elevations range from 300 to over 2000 meters.  This inventory was constructed to address the inventory and monitoring needs of the National Park Service staff that has the responsibility of protecting and managing the Park.  Monitoring environmental changes over time is a major function of this staff in the GSMNP.  Soil carbon and its compositional changes over time can be used to track environmental changes that affect the Park.  During the course of this inventory, 72 soil pedons were sampled and total carbon was determined on each soil horizon.  These sites included both mesic and frigid soils across the various parent materials that can be found in the Park.  In general, soil carbon content was highest in the surface layers and increases with increasing elevation.  At elevations below 1280 meters, slope aspect has an effect on soil carbon contents, with north aspects having higher carbon contents than south aspects.  Concave slopes have higher carbon contents than convex slopes.  Above 1280 meters, there was no noticeable affect of aspect on soil carbon contents.  The GSMNP is the last large scale expanse of protected area in the southeast United States and serves as vast carbon sink in this area.  Disturbance of this area, especially at high elevations, would diminish the ability of this environment to sequester carbon and would take many decades to recover.  These types of issues need to be addressed in current soil inventorying projects as the environmental impacts of natural and man-induced activities are managed.