Search results for "soil carbon"
showing 8 items of 128 documents
Effect of agricultural practices on soil microbial communities
2008
Soil carbon sequestration is an important and immediate sink for removing atmospheric carbon dioxide and slowing global warming. Agricultural practices strongly impact CO2 emission from the soil and the loss of soil organic matter is lower when “no-till” agriculture is practiced. The present work was performed in order to investigate effects of different agricultural practices on soil microbial communities. Field experiments took place at three Italian locations strongly differing in pedological, chemical and climatic characteristics: Naples, Turin and Piacenza. Soils were subjected to four management practices such as traditional (TRA), minimum tillage (MIN) and amendments with compost (CO…
Straw uses trade-off only after soil organic carbon steady-state
2018
Soil organic matter (SOM) is the key for a healthy soil and a relevant property to achieve the sustainability on soil management. However, soils are still net exporters of organic matter. One example is the use of wheat straw residue for industrial and energy applications, which has gained attention in the last years. The offfarm use of this abundant and low cost resource should follow sustainability criteria to avoid soil degradation and SOM losses. Straw residue incorporation is recognized as a recommended management practice to control erosion and mitigate CO2 emissions by increasing SOM. The goal of this work was: i) to evaluate the steady-state carbon (C) level in relation to C input a…
An analysis of carbon storage protected areas with relation to agroforestry management and biodiversity
2008
This work investigated the role of land cover and land use change (LUC) as a soil ability to store carbon and reduce carbon dioxide emission in a Mediterranean area. Using a paired site approach we estimated the effect of land cover change on the carbon stock from 1972 to 2008 in a natural reserve (Grotta di S. Ninfa) in the West of Sicily. Fifteen paired sites representative of five land use change were selected. We studied the effect of land use on soil organic carbon (SOC) content in bulk soil and 2000-1000 µm, 1000-500 µm, 500-250 µm, 250-63 µm, 63-25 µm and <25 µm size fractions. Furthermore, laboratory incubation of the soil samples was conducted to measure carbon dioxide evolution in…
Soil carbon in Mediterranean ecosystems and related management problems
2011
Soil erosion and carbon budget in Mediterranean vineyards
2016
Vineyards of Mediterranean regions are characterized by low organic matter level and high sediment and nutrient erosion rates, which are the main causes of soil degradation and low sustainability of vine production. Alternative soil management - cover crops, green manure of prune residues, buffer strip- has widely applied as soil management practices to reduce soil degradation processes. However, the effectiveness of innovative soil management should be evaluated in relation to climatic and soil conditions. Many studies have been carried out in Sicilian vineyards in order to improve the sustainability with particular attention to: reduction of erosion, increase of soil organic matter, manag…
No-Till Soil Organic Carbon Sequestration Patterns as Affected by Climate and Soil Erosion in the Arable Land of Mediterranean Europe
2022
No-tillage (NT) has been considered an agronomic tool to sequester soil organic carbon (SOC) and match the 4p1000 initiative requirements of conservative soil management. Recently, some doubts have emerged about the NT effect on SOC sequestration, often because observations and experimental data vary widely depending on climate and geographic characteristics. Therefore, a suitable SOC accounting method is needed that considers climate and morphology interactions. In this study, the yearly ratio between SOC in NT and conventional tillage (CT) (RRNT/CT) collected in a previous study for flat (96 samples) and sloping (44 samples) paired sites was used to map the overestimation of SOC sequestra…
Afforestation and reforestation: the Sicilian case study
2014
In some regions of the world such as the Northern Hemisphere, the abandonment of agricultural land is one of the most widespread forms of land use change. In general, abandonment is followed by colonization by herbaceous and woody plants. Since the 1950s, wide areas of Southern Italy have been afforested for soil conservation improvement. In order to quantify the effects of agricultural abandonment and artificial afforestation on soil organic carbon (SOC), a dataset of 48 Sicilian sites has been analyzed. Because of their high environmental variability, these sites can be considered as representative of Southern Italy and in general of the Mediterranean basin. Soil samples were taken throug…
Comparing soil inventory with modelling : Carbon balance in central European forest soils varies among forest types
2018
Forest soils represent a large carbon pool and already small changes in this pool may have an important effect on the global carbon cycle. To predict the future development of the soil organic carbon (SOC) pool, well-validated models are needed. We applied the litter and soil carbon model Yasso15 to 1838 plots of the German national forest soil inventory (NFSI) for the period between 1985 and 2014 to enables a direct comparison to the NFSI measurements. In addition, to provide data for the German Greenhouse Gas Inventory, we simulated the development of SOC with Yasso15 applying a climate projection based on the RCP8.5 scenario. The initial model-calculated SOC stocks were adjusted to the m…