HOW AND WHERE DOES SOIL PYROGENIC CARBON SHAPE THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF AMAZONIAN OLD-GROWTH LOWLAND FORESTS?

• Grant number: 25/26377-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Post-doctor
• Start date: April 29, 2026
• End date: September 28, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Ecosystems Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Plínio Barbosa de Camargo
• Grantee: João Arthur Pompeu Pavanelli
• Supervisor: Peter Smith
• Host Institution: Centro de Energia Nuclear na Agricultura (CENA). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Piracicaba , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: University of Aberdeen, Scotland
• Associated to the scholarship: 23/15402-9 - Interaction between geospatial monitoring of environmental data and soil carbon from fire., BP.PD

Abstract

Tropical forests play a major role in global soil organic carbon (SOC) storage, with Amazonian soils containing ~36 Pg C in the upper 30 cm alone, potentially storing half of total tropical forest carbon. Pyrogenic carbon (PyC), a fraction of total soil organic carbon formed through the incomplete combustion of biomass, is widely found in Amazonia soils. PyC stock in Amazonian forest soils was previously estimated at 1.1 Pg in the topsoil layer (up to 0.3 m) while recent modelling suggests ~1.43 Pg. Due to its polyaromatic chemical structure, PyC is stable over millennia, representing an important carbon reservoir in the soil, enhancing fertility, carbon sequestration capacity and, as a consequence, may increase the Amazonia forest resistance to extreme drought. The role of pyrogenic carbon for forest structure and dynamics remains, however, unquantified across large regions. Bridging this gap is timely given the growing recognition of Amazonian soil carbon balance and the potential feedbacks between soil carbon persistence, vegetation recovery, and climate and land use changes. This proposal aims to explore and model soil PyC interactions with old-growth lowland forests structure and dynamics by leveraging a newly developed map of soil pyrogenic carbon derived from extensive soil sampling, alongside multi-source remote sensing products, through spatially explicit statistical and geospatial modeling. This is the first investigation of how soil PyC interacts with aboveground ecosystem features at the broad Amazonia scale, with potential implications for global carbon cycle science, land management and forest ecology. (AU)