Carbon Soil Storage and Technologies to Increase Soil Carbon Stocks in the South American Savanna

• Autor(a) principal: Castellano, Gabriel Ribeiro [UNESP]
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Santos, Landerlei Almeida, Menegário, Amauri Antonio [UNESP]
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UNESP
• DOI: 10.3390/su14095571
• Texto Completo: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/su14095571; http://hdl.handle.net/11449/241033
• topic: cerrado; land-use change; landcover; soil carbon stocks; south american savanna

The expansion of the agricultural frontiers that occurred in the last decades in the South American savanna (Cerrado), the second-largest biome in Brazil (covering an area of 204 million hectares), has accounted for a substantial portion of South America’s CO2 emissions. In this context, our research investigated the potential for soil carbon storage in the biome. The analysis of previous data (n = 197) shows a vertical distribution pattern of soil carbon stock: 26.17% for the upper 0–30 cm layer, 37.67% for the 30–100 cm layer, and 36.15% for the 100–200 cm layer. The total soil carbon storage for the biome is 13.5 ± 6.7 gigatons (n = 71) for the upper 0–30 cm layer, 30.5 ± 18.9 Gt (n = 64) for the 0–100 cm layer, and 47.8 ± 4.3 (n = 9) for the 0–200 cm layer. The results indicate that the soil carbon stock up to 1 m deep in the Cerrado ranges from 0.5% to 2.29% of the global soil organic carbon storage for this depth. Further research is necessary to investigate what happens at a depth of at least 2 m. The results also indicate that the soil under pasture lands constitutes the largest manageable pool for increasing soil carbon stocks via the restoration of degraded pastures.