The legacy of one hundred years of climate change for organic carbon stocks in global agricultural topsoils.

ABSTRACT: Soil organic carbon (SOC) of agricultural soils is observed to decline in many parts of the world. Understanding the reasons behind such losses is important for SOC accounting and formulating climate mitigation strategies. Disentangling the impact of last century's climate change from effects of preceding land use, management changes and erosion is difficult and most likely impossible to address in observations outside of warming experiments. However, the record of last century's climate change is available for every part of the globe, so the potential effect of climate change on SOC stocks can be modelled. In this study, an established and validated FAO framework was used to model global agricultural topsoil (0-30 cm) SOC stock dynamics from 1919 to 2018 as attributable to climate change.

SUBMITTER: Poeplau C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10170085 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature