Abstract. Soil fertility and organic carbon (C) stock estimations are crucial to soil management, especially that of degraded soils, for productive agricultural use and in soil C sequestration studies. Currently, estimations based on generalized soil mass (hectare furrow basis) or bulk density are used which may be suitable for normal agricultural soils, but not for degraded soils. In this study, soil organic C, available nitrogen (N), available phosphorus (P 2 O 5 ) and available potassium (K 2 O), and their stocks were estimated using three methods: (i) generalized soil mass (GSM, 2 million kg ha −1 furrow soil), (ii) bulk-density-based soil mass (BDSM) and (iii) the proportion of fine earth volume (FEV) method, for soils sampled from physically degraded lands in the eastern dry zone of Karnataka State in India. Comparative analyses using these methods revealed that the soil organic C, N, P 2 O and K 2 O stocks determined by using BDSM were higher than those determined by the GSM method. The soil organic C values were the lowest in the FEV method. The GSM method overestimated soil organic C, N, P 2 O and K 2 O by 9.3-72.1, 9.5-72.3, 7.1-66.6 and 9.2-72.3 %, respectively, compared to FEV-based estimations for physically degraded soils. The differences among the three methods of estimation were lower in soils with low gravel content and increased with an increase in gravel volume. There was overestimation of soil organic C and soil fertility with GSM and BDSM methods. A reassessment of methods of estimation was, therefore, attempted to provide fair estimates for land development projects in degraded lands.
Accurate assessment of carbon stock of trees is essential to model carbon dynamics in the forest ecosystem. Estimation of carbon stock at regional level involves successive quantitative modeling at various scales. While developments in aerial and satellite remote sensing at greatly reduced the uncertainty in up scaling of plot level biomass carbon stock estimates to regional or national estimates. A substantial amount of uncertainty in the system comes when carbon stock of each tree in a plot is estimated from established allometric equations. In this study 12 trees were destructively measured for their carbon stock value and the same was estimated using Terrestrial Laser Scanning technique, local allometric equations and global allometric equations. The carbon content estimates from terrestrial Laser Scanning method (26.01% RMSE relative to mean) were consistently closer to destructive measurements as compared to local allometric equations (42.58%-101.88% RMSE relative to mean) and global allometric equations (38.8%-50.69% RMSE relative to mean). Field measurement of sample wood density and sample carbon content significantly reduced the uncertainty in local allometric equations. The sources of error and applicability of each technique are discussed in this study.
Abstract. Soil fertility and organic carbon (C) stock estimations are crucial to soil management especially that of degraded soils, for productive agricultural use and in soil C sequestration studies. Currently, estimations based on generalized soil mass (hectare-furrow basis) or bulk density (BD) basis are used which may be suitable for normal agricultural soils but not for degraded soils. We measured soil organic C, available nitrogen (N), available phosphorus (P) and available potassium (K), and estimated stocks using three methods: (i) generalized soil mass (GSM, 2 million kg ha−1 furrow soil), ii) bulk density based soil mass (BDSM) and (iii) the proportion of fine earth volume (FEV) method, for soils sampled from physically degraded lands in Eastern Dry Zone of Karnataka State in India. Comparative analyses using these methods revealed that the soil organic C, and N, P and K stocks determined by using BDSM were higher than those by GSM method. The soil organic C values were the lowest in the FEV method compared to the other two methods. The GSM method overestimated soil organic C, N, P and K by 9.3–72.1 %, 9.5–72.3 %, 7.1–66.6 % and 9.2–72.3 %, respectively, compared to FEV based estimations for physically degraded soils. The differences among the three methods of determinations were lower in soils with low gravel content and increased with increase in gravel volume. There was overestimation of soil organic C and soil fertility with GSM and BDSM methods. A reassessment of methods of estimation was, therefore, attempted to provide fair estimates for land development projects in degraded lands.
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