Declines in soil carbon storage under no tillage can be alleviated in the long run
Item
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Title
Declines in soil carbon storage under no tillage can be alleviated in the long run
Geoderma
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Creator
Andong Cai
Tianfu Han
Tianjing Ren
Jonathan Sanderman
Yichao Rui
Bin Wang
Pete Smith
Minggang Xu
Yu'e Li
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Subject
Conventional tillage
No-tillage
Soil carbon
Soil profile
Time series
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doi
10.1016/j.geoderma.2022.116028
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Abstract
Improved management of agricultural soils plays a critical role in mitigating climate change. We studied the temporal effects of the adoption of no-tillage (NT) management, often touted as an important carbon sequestration strategy, on soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in surface and subsurface soil layers by performing a meta-analysis of 1061 pairs of published experimental data comparing NT and conventional tillage (CT). In the early years of adoption, NT increased surface (0–10 cm) SOC storage compared to CT but reduced it in deeper layers leading to a decrease of SOC in the entire soil profile. These NT-driven SOC losses diminished over time and the net change was approaching zero at 14 years. Our findings demonstrate that NT is not a simple guaranteed solution for drawing down atmospheric CO2 and regenerating the lost SOC in cropping soils globally and highlight the importance of long-term NT for the recovery of initial SOC losses.
