Soil carbon changes in areas undergoing expansion of sugarcane into pastures in south-central Brazil

Is the expansion of sugarcane over pasturelands a sustainable strategy for Brazil's bioenergy industry?

“…Soil C sequestration C sequestration (Cseq) [16][17][18] Maintenance of biodiversity Shannon's diversity index (H') [20,32] Soil C cycling C cycling index (CYC) [21][22][23] Soil nutrient provision and acidity buffering Soil fertility index (FRT) [24][25][26] Soil Supplementary Fig. S1).…”

“…Previous studies evaluating environmental changes associated with Brazilian sugarcane expansion have provided insightful results regarding soil quality and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. Soils provide multiple ES, allowing sustained food and fiber production, delivering climate regulation, flood regulation, improved air and water quality and providing a reservoir for biodiversity [4][5][6][7][8]29].…”

“…Studies that focus solely on individual ES often fail to unveil synergies and tradeoffs that may occur among various services, thus impairing overall conclusions that can be drawn from the investigations. Although previous studies provided guidance for assessing environmental effects associated with pasture-sugarcane conversions in Brazil [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], they have not provided an integrated approach that accounts for the social, economic and environmental aspects of sustainability. Currently, most available studies focus on a single indicator or ES, which means that it is neither reasonable nor feasible to determine whether or not the current expansion of sugarcane in Brazil is sustainable.…”

Isotopically constrained soil carbon and nitrogen budgets in a soybean field chronosequence in the Brazilian Amazon region

“…Conversion of Amazonian forests to cattle pastures has had variable impacts on soil C stocks, including increases on well‐managed lands and decreases on degraded lands [ Neill and Davidson , ; Maia et al ., ]. Conversion of pasture to sugar cane in south central Brazil has been shown to increase soil C stocks [ Oliveira et al ., ]. Conversion of native forest and Cerrado vegetation to cropland in Mato Grosso and Rondônia is estimated to have caused an average loss of 6% of soil C stocks when tilled and no significant change under no till [ Maia et al ., ].…”

Soil Carbon Stocks under Amazonian Forest: Distribution in the Soil Fractions and Vulnerability to Emission

“…However, despite the importance, there are few studies that can quantify the carbon contained in the soil fractions under primary forest. Recently in Brazil, several authors has investigated the carbon stocks in soil organic matter (SOM) under áreas of substitution of native Cerrado vegetation by agroecosystems (Ferreira et al, 2016), about disturbed wetlands of the Cerrado biome (Souza et al, 2015), about carbon stocks under areas primary forestry (Marques et al, 2016), to evaluate changes in SOM after organic compost application (Silva et al, 2016) and changes in soil total organic C content and labile organic matter fractions in response to cover crop cultivation in an orange orchard (Oliveira et al, 2016a) and changes in soil organic carbon fractions to sugarcane planting due expansion of sugarcane into pastures (Olaya et al, 2016;Oliveira et al, 2016b;Signor et al, 2014).…”