Storing Carbon in Agricultural Soils to Help Head-Off a Global Warming

Rosenberg, Norman J.; Izaurralde, R. C.

doi:10.1007/978-94-017-3089-1_1

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…The SOC, to a large extent, moderates and regulates processes associated with soil degradation and productivity through its influence on soil structural stability, water holding capacity, nutrient bioavailability, buffering capacity, and soil biodiversity (Tisdall & Oades, 1982;Oades, 1984;Lal et al, 1990). Therefore, soil also plays active role in sequestrating carbon from atmosphere and alleviating increases of greenhouse gases concentration through adopting new technique (Metting et al, 2001;Rosenberg & Izaurralde, 2001). Hence, there is an increasing demand to study SOC dynamics in different ecoregions of the world (Ingram & Fernandes, 2001;Landi et al, 2003).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Losses of soil organic carbon under wind erosion in China

Yan

Wang

et al. 2005

Global Change Biology

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Soil organic carbon (SOC) storage generally represents the long-term net balance of photosynthesis and total respiration in terrestrial ecosystems. However, soil erosion can affect SOC content by direct removal of soil and reduction of the surface soil depth; it also affects plant growth and soil biological activity, soil air CO 2 concentration, water regimes, soil temperature, soil respiration, carbon flux to the atmosphere, and carbon deposition in soil. In arid and semi-arid region of northern China, wind erosion caused soil degradation and desert expansion. This paper estimated the SOC loss of the surface horizon at eroded regions based on soil property and wind erosion intensity data. The SOC loss in China because of wind erosion was about 75 Tg C yr À1 in 1990s. The spatial pattern of SOC loss indicates that SOC loss of the surface horizon increases significantly with the increase of soil wind erosion intensity. The comparison of SOC loss and annual net primary productivity (NPP) of terrestrial ecosystem was discussed in wind erosion regions of China. We found that NPP is also low in the eroded regions and heavy SOC loss often occurs in regions where NPP is very small. However, there is potential to improve our study to resolve uncertainty on the soil organic matter oxidation and soil deposition processes in eroded and deposited sites.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Losses of soil organic carbon under wind erosion in China

Yan

Wang

et al. 2005

Global Change Biology

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“…Soils are the largest carbon pool in terrestrial ecosystems, but incremental changes in this pool are slow and small relative to the size of the pool. There is also high local variability of soil characteristics and carbon content [10,39]. Several factors affect carbon accumulation in soils (litter production and composition, soil biology, hydrology and climate), and complex interactions between input rates and decomposition rates can result in very heterogeneous situations [40].…”

Section: Soilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Soil carbon represents the largest carbon pool of terrestrial ecosystems and has considerable potential to sequester carbon but, as discussed earlier, obtaining credits from soil-carbon sequestration is hampered by several factors: the need to monitor small incremental changes relative to a large carbon pool, long-time periods to accrue the full carbon benefits, high local variability of soil-carbon content, and relatively costly soil-carbon measurement procedures [10,19,39,54]. As a result, the costs of measurement, monitoring and verification of soilcarbon sequestration may outweigh the value of carbon sequestered [19,22,79].…”

Section: Carbon Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The cost of measuring a single sample of soil carbon was estimated at $16.37 in agricultural soils in the Northern Plains of USA [80]. Given the need for several samples to obtain an acceptable level of precision for a site, it is obvious that more research is needed developing cheaper laboratory methods to measure soil carbon [10,39].…”

Section: Carbon Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Accounting for carbon sequestration and its implications for land-use change and forestry projects.

Cacho¹,

Hean²,

Karanja³

2009

CABI Reviews

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As carbon becomes a valuable commodity traded in markets for greenhouse-gas emissions, there will be incentives to adopt land uses that capture carbon payments as well as produce other marketable outputs, including biofuels. These production systems may be more sustainable than many of those in current use, but there is also the risk that the growing demand for biofuels will cause land degradation, deforestation and food scarcity. The land-use patterns that arise as a result of carbon markets will largely depend on the 'rules of the game', which will be determined by governments and international agencies. This paper addresses these issues by reviewing the literature on the potential for terrestrial carbon pools to contribute to mitigating climate change. The review covers studies from forestry, ecology, economics, agriculture and other disciplines, reflecting the complexity of the issues and the range of research priorities that will need to be addressed in the next few decades. There is strong evidence that the potential for land-use systems to contribute to climate mitigation efforts is significant, but for this to occur it will be necessary that landholders receive incentives to change their current land uses. These incentives are linked to scientific, institutional and economic factors. An essential component will be the development of markets that allow the trade of emission reductions from both the energy sector and the land-use change and forestry (LUCF) sector. Technical factors that will contribute to success include: creation and analysis of remote-sensing and socioeconomic datasets to estimate credible baselines; development of simple and inexpensive techniques for measuring soil carbon; and development of agreed standards that relate land-use and biophysical characteristics of a site to carbon content. Much research is being done to address these factors, and monitoring and reporting systems for LUCF activities are operational under the Kyoto Protocol, but obstacles remain for widespread implementation. There is a window of opportunity for projects to be developed that restore degraded croplands, avoid deforestation and encourage reforestation. This opportunity has a limited life span that depends on the duration of the transition period to low-carbon energy technologies that will ultimately carry the burden of climate change mitigation.

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“…Methods for reducing this buildup of CO 2 in the Earth's atmosphere have been suggested, and include reduction in emission of CO 2 as well as increasing storage of carbon (C) in forests, soils, and the oceans (Rosenberg, 2000;IPCC, 1996). Research is being conducted to determine the potential for storing C in soils, taking into consideration biophysical, land management, and economic factors Antle and McCarl, 2001;Yost et al, 2002;Jones et al, 2002).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%