Improving carbon sequestration estimation through accounting carbon stored in grassland soil

• Autores: Ricard, Maria Florencia; Viglizzo, Ernesto Francisco
• Año de publicación: 2019
• Idioma: inglés
• Tipo de recurso: artículo
• Materia: SOC SEQUESTRATION; GRAZING LANDS; THEORETICAL METHOD; EMPIRICAL VALIDATION
• Institución: Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

Based on international guidelines, the elaboration of national carbon (C) budgets in many countries has tended to set aside the capacity of grazing lands to sequester C as soil organic carbon (SOC). A widely applied simple method assumes a steady state for SOC stocks in grasslands and a long-term equilibrium between annual C gains and losses. This article presents a theoretical method based on the annual conversion of belowground biomass into SOC to include the capacity of grazing-land soils to sequester C in greenhouse gases (GHG) calculations. Average figures from both methods can be combined with land-use/land-cover data to reassess the net C sequestration of the rural sector from a country. The results of said method were validated with empirical values based on peer-reviewed literature that provided annual data on SOC sequestration. This methodology offers important differences over pre-existing GHG landscape approach calculation methods: • improves the estimation about the capacity of grazing-land soils to sequester C assuming these lands are not in a steady state and • counts C gains when considering that grazing lands are managed at low livestock densities.
Fil: Ricard, Maria Florencia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra y Ambientales de La Pampa. Universidad Nacional de La Pampa. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra y Ambientales de La Pampa; Argentina
Fil: Viglizzo, Ernesto Francisco. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra y Ambientales de La Pampa. Universidad Nacional de La Pampa. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Ciencias de la Tierra y Ambientales de La Pampa; Argentina