Effects of volcanic ash on GHG production rates and soil properties in a drained peat soil in Finland and a comparison to wood ash

Abstract

Past volcanic eruptions in Iceland have sometimes led to long-distance distribution of fine volcanic tephra (volcanic ash). Evidence for volcanic ash from, for example, the ca. 4250 BP eruption in Hekla (H4) and the 1783-1784 AD Laki eruption in southern Iceland has been found in wetlands at Svalbard (Kekonen et al. 2005), Scotland (Charman et al. 1995) and Scandinavia (Thorarinsson 1981). Basaltic volcanic ash contains several compounds, e.g. mixed sulphates, ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3-) (Ayris and Delmelle 2012), all of which have the potential to affect various soil processes, such as N cycling and greenhouse gas (GHG) production. Such direct effects of long distance volcanic ash transport have, however, been little studied so far. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption started in Iceland in March, 2010. A major outbreak of the central crater under the covering ice cap started on 14 April and continued until 24 May, ejecting a very large amount of gases and fine ash into the atmosphere. This ash contained mainly silicon dioxide, but also other compounds including sulphates (O’Dowd et al. 2012). This eruption gave us an opportunity to study the fresh volcanic ash and its effects on soil properties. Because this volcanic ash was alkaline, it could increase soil pH and affect the microbiological processes behind GHG emissions in a similar way to that suggested for wood ash (Maljanen et al. 2014, Klemedtsson et al. 2010). We used fresh volcanic ash from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in a laboratory experiment conducted on samples of drained peat soil from western Finland that were also used for studying the effects of wood ash recycling from bioenergy power plants (Maljanen et al. 2014). The aim of this study was to test whether this volcanic ash affected GHG production rates in drained peat soil in our laboratory incubation experiments and to compare the results with wood ash.