Buried Wood: A Common Yet Poorly Documented Form of Deadwood

Buried wood (BW: downed deadwood buried more than 50% by soil, litter, or ground vegetation) is a common but understudied part of forest ecosystems. We reviewed the literature and conducted a meta-analysis of BW that included new data from Australia, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Japan, Norway, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, the USA, and Wales. Buried wood occurred in a wide range of forest types of natural and anthropogenic origin. In some forests, BW was effectively preserved and volumes of BW exceeded the volume of all other live and deadwood combined. Boreal and oroboreal coniferous forests contained large amounts of BW, whereas hardwood forests appeared to contain little BW due to differences in ground vegetation, wood decomposition pathways, and climatic and edaphic conditions. Coniferous forests growing on paludified ground represent areas with a large capacity to store BW. The largest quantity of BW reported was 935 m(3) ha(-1) in paludified black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.)) forests, where typically mature live bole volumes are only 150 m(3) ha(-1). Buried wood can accumulate over several disturbance cycles (centuries), due to greatly reduced rates of decomposition following burial. As such, BW can represent a large forest C pool that is currently not recognized in forest C accounting using field measurements or models. Failing to account for wood burial can lead to underestimates of ecosystem deadwood stocks as well as misinterpretations of ecosystem dynamics. Buried wood and the burial process should be included in forest measurement and models, particularly for boreal and oroboreal ecosystems, to reduce uncertainty and improve accuracy in forest C accounting. This will require improvements to existing field sampling protocols and collection of long-term data on processes creating BW.