Soil and vegetation carbon stocks after land-use changes in a seasonally dry tropical forest

Geoderma

Rômulo Simões Cezar Menezes et al.

Aldo Torres Sales

Dário Costa Primo

Eliza Rosário Gomes Marinho de Albuquerque

Kennedy Nascimento de Jesus

Frans Germain Corneel Pareyn

Mônica da Silva Santana

Uemeson José dos Santos

Júlio César Rodrigues Martins

Tiago Diniz Althoff

Diego Marcelino do Nascimento

Rafael Feitosa Gouveia

Milton Marques Fernandes

Diego Campana Loureiro

José Coelho de Araújo Filho

Vanderlise Giongo

Gustavo Pereira Duda

Bruno José Rodrigues Alves

Walane Maria Pereira de Mello Ivo

Eunice Maia de Andrade

Alexandre de Siqueira Pinto

Everardo Valadares de Sá Barretto Sampaio

Arid regions

Caatinga

Deforestation

Ecosystem C stocks

NE Brazil

May 15, 2021

10.1016/j.geoderma.2021.114943

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016706121000173

The lack of robust scientific data still hinders estimates of soil and plant carbon (C) losses due to land-use changes in most dry tropical ecosystems. The present study investigated the effects of land-use and cover changes on total ecosystem C stocks in NE Brazil, aiming to quantify C losses after the removal of the native forest, known as Caatinga. The sampling design included the four main land-use/cover types (Dense Caatinga, Open Caatinga, Pastures and Crop fields) and the seven main soil classes (Arenosols, Acrisols, Regosols, Ferrasols, Luvisols, Planosols, and Leptosols), a combination that represents over 90% of the region. This design resulted in 192 sampling points (48 in each land-use), distributed proportionally to the area of occurrence of each soil class. In each sampling point, we determined C stocks in soil organic matter (SOM) and roots (to a depth of 1 m or rock layer), aboveground vegetation biomass (trees and herbs, separately), deadwood, and surface litter. Areas covered by Dense Caatinga store, on average, nearly 125 Mg ha−1 of C. Most of this C is stored in the soil organic matter (72.1%), followed by aboveground biomass (15.9%), belowground biomass (7.3%), deadwood (2.9%), litter (1.3%), and herbaceous biomass (0.5%). The substitution of Dense Caatinga to plant pastures and crop fields caused losses of >50% of ecosystem C stocks, reaching almost 65 Mg ha−1 of C, with nearly equal losses from the SOM and vegetation biomass compartments. Open Caatinga store nearly 30% less C than Dense Caatinga. Contrary to what was expected, the overall differences in C stocks between soil classes were not significant, with a few exceptions. We expect that the findings of this study will contribute to a more robust inventory of GHG emissions/removals due to land-use changes in NE Brazil and other dry tropical regions of the globe.

From the village to the territory