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Soil carbon sequestration and land‐use change: processes and potential
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Summary: When agricultural land is no longer used for cultivation and allowed to revert to natural vegetation or replanted to perennial vegetation, soil organic carbon can accumulate. This accumulation process essentially reverses some of the effects responsible for soil organic carbon losses from when the land was converted from perennial vegetation. We discuss the essential elements of what is known about soil organic matter dynamics that may result in enhanced soil carbon sequestration with changes in land‐use and soil management. We review literature that reports changes in soil organic carbon after changes in land‐use that favour carbon accumulation. This data summary provides a guide to approximate rates of SOC sequestration that are possible with management, and indicates the relative importance of some factors that influence the rates of organic carbon sequestration in soil. There is a large variation in the length of time for and the rate at which carbon may accumulate in soil, related to the productivity of the recovering vegetation, physical and biological conditions in the soil, and the past history of soil organic carbon inputs and physical disturbance. Maximum rates of C accumulation during the early aggrading stage of perennial vegetation growth, while substantial, are usually much less than 100 g C m −2 y −1. Average rates of accumulation are similar for forest or grassland establishment: 33.8 g C m −2 y −1 and 33.2 g C m −2 y −1 , respectively. These observed rates of soil organic C accumulation, when combined with the small amount of land area involved, are insufficient to account for a significant fraction of the missing C in the global carbon cycle as accumulating in the soils of formerly agricultural land.
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“Compared to annual crops, Miscanthus has the potential to sequester C due to reduced soil disturbance (tillage is only required as part of the initial cultivation; Post & Kwon, 2000), the translocation of C from above‐ground biomass to roots and rhizomes (Kuzyakov & Domanski, 2000), and the provision of soil C inputs from leaf litter (Amougou, Bertrand, Machet, & Recous, 2011).”
From Measured and modelled effect of land‐use change from temperate grassland to Miscanthus on soil carbon stocks after 12 years (2019) · cites this paper as Post & Kwon, 2000
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“Potential, default C sequestration rates for arable crops, grassland and forests have been estimated to be 0.3, 0.5–0.7 and 0.1–0.2 Mg C ha−1 year−1, respectively [132]; others found 0.33 Mg C ha−1 year−1 for both grassland and forest systems [133].”
From Carbon Sequestration by Perennial Energy Crops: Is the Jury Still Out? (2015) · cites this paper as [133]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Post, W. M., & Kwon, K. C.
- Affiliations
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
- Tuskegee University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Post, W. M.
- Venue
- Global Change Biology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2000-03
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 317-327
- ISSN
- 1354-1013 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2486
- OpenAlex
- W2159758382
- Cited by
- 2,602
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 71 · 2025: 101 · 2024: 98 · 2023: 128 · 2022: 143 · 2021: 122 · 2020: 137 · 2019: 160 · 2018: 141 · 2017: 148 · 2016: 136 · 2015: 136 · 2014: 146 · 2013: 137 · 2012: 151
- FWCI
- 67.34
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Global Change Biology (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy (DE-AC05?)
- Lockheed Martin
- Biological and Environmental Research
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Dynamics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil erosion and sediment transport
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Soil Science › Soil Geostatistics and Mapping
- Keywords
- soil carbon sequestration, land use change, soil organic carbon, perennial vegetation, forest establishment, grassland establishment, soil organic matter dynamics, carbon accumulation rates, soil management, carbon cycle
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