Neither soil C nor soil N varied significantly between
any of the silvicultural treatments and paired controls.
Mean soil C ranged from 7.4% for DL to 10.5% for ST
(Figure 5), with mean soil N exhibiting a more limited
range of variation—from 0.6% to just over 0.7% (Figure
6). As with SOM, neither soil C nor soil N displayed
a gradient response to the treatments. These minimal
effects of forest management on soil C and N stores are
generally consistent with conclusions of Johnson and
Curtis (2001), based on their meta-analysis of 26 studies.
Despite this conclusion, they found great variation
among harvesting methods and stand types. In particular,
they found that whole-tree harvesting decreased
soil C and N by 6% across all studies in the analysis
(Johnson and Curtis 2001)