Modelling soil organic carbon stocks and their changesin the northeast of Spain

Currently, there is little information about soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and changes in Mediterraneanareas at a regional scale. We modelled an area of 95 269 km 2 in northeast Spain using the Global Environ-mental Facility Soil Organic Carbon (GEFSOC) system to predict SOC stocks and changes in...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Álvaro-Fuentes, Jorge, Easter, M, Cantero-Martínez, Carlos, Paustian, Keith
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión aceptada para publicación
Fecha de publicación:2011
País:España
Institución:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repositorio:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10459.1/468363
Acceso en línea:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2389.2011.01390.x
https://repositori.udl.cat/handle/10459.1/468363
http://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/468363
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Soil organic carbon
Regional estimates
Spain
Land use
Ecosystem 22 modelling
Descripción
Sumario:Currently, there is little information about soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and changes in Mediterraneanareas at a regional scale. We modelled an area of 95 269 km 2 in northeast Spain using the Global Environ-mental Facility Soil Organic Carbon (GEFSOC) system to predict SOC stocks and changes in pasture, forestand agricultural soils. The spatial distribution of the different land-use categories and their change over timewas obtained by using the Corine database and official Spanish statistics on land use from 1926 to 2007. Themodel predicted the largest current SOC stock in forest soils at 578 Tg C. Agricultural soils were the secondlargest SOC reservoir, containing 244 Tg C. During the last 30 years, the model predicted a total SOC gainin the 0–30-cm soil layer of 34 Tg C. Forest and grassland-pasture soils had a decline in their stored SOC of5 and 3 Tg C, respectively, because of the reduction in the soil surface occupied by both classes. The greatestSOC gain was predicted in agricultural soils with 42 Tg C caused by changes in management, which led toincreases in C inputs. Although model uncertainty was not quantified, some hypothetical assumptions aboutthe initialization and parameterization of the model could be potential sources of uncertainty. Our simulationspredicted that in northeast Spain soil management has contributed to the sequestration of substantial amountsof atmospheric CO2 during the last 30 years. More research is needed in order to study the potential role ofsoils as atmospheric CO 2 sinks under different managements and climatic conditions.