Soil Organic Carbon is a vital component of soil with important effects on the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. Storage of SOC results from interactions among the dynamic ecological processes of photosynthesis, decomposition, and soil respiration. Human activities over the course of the last 150 years have led to changes in these processes and consequently to the depletion of SOC and the exacerbation of global climate change. But these human activities also now provide an opportunity for sequestering carbon back into soil. Future warming and elevated CO2, patterns of past land use, and land management strategies, along with the physical heterogeneity of landscapes are expected to produce complex patterns of SOC capacity in soil.
This website showcases Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) efforts to address climate change in the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors and supports countries participating in the climate change negotiation processes within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Launched by France in 2015 at the COP 21, the aim of this initiative is to demonstrate that agriculture, and in particular agricultural soils, can play a crucial role where food security and climate change are concerned. The contention is that an annual growth rate of 0.4% in soil carbon stocks, or 4% per year, would halt the increase in the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere that is attributed to human activities.
The Noble Research Institute has embarked on a national effort to advance ecosystem service markets that provide incentives to improve soil health systems.
The possibility that N fertilizer increases soil organic matter (SOM) mineralization and, as a result, reduces SOM stocks has led to a great debate about the long-term sustainability of maize-based agroecosystems as well as the best method to estimate fertilizer N use efficiency (FNUE).
Researchers have developed a new technique to directly analyze transfer RNA (tRNA), providing a clearer picture of microbial communities’ responses to various environmental changes, including the changing availability of nutrients.