Researching Locally, Thinking Globally: Carbon Flux from Soil in Suburban Maryland

With expanding urbanization, there has been an increase in manipulation of the environment by activities such as construction and landscaping. The consequences of these alterations on carbon efflux are important in understanding urban impact on the global carbon cycle from soils. This study aims to help quantify carbon efflux in urban soil from different land covers over a 6-month time span. Using a standard chamber method carbon efflux was recorded for 12 different sites over 3 different land covers. No difference in carbon efflux amongst the land covers was found, most likely due to the high variation among samples. The data suggests with further research and more troubleshooting significant differences will be seen in the warmer seasons between the cover types