Soil quality restoration through carbon sequestration under climate change scenario in India

Abstract

Climate change has emerged a major challenge not only for sustainable agriculture but also for human settlement. Climate change including global warming with its adverse impact on the life on the earth is now global issue and becoming severe day by day. The increase in CO 2 concentration results in climate change which is directly or indirectly attributed to human activities that changes the composition of global atmosphere adversely. Scientific models and observations over the past 1000 years provide evidences that global warming is due to anthropogenic increase in green house gas (GHG's)including that of CO 2. The increased atmospheric concentration of CO 2 may influence soil temperature, pattern of precipitation and evaporation and resultant changes in the physiochemical and biological properties of soil. Thus, there has emphasis to reduce this concentration through the process known as carbon sequestration. A considerable part of the depleted Soil Organic Carbon pool can be restored through conversion of marginal lands into restorative land uses, adoption of conservation tillage with cover crops and crop residue mulch, nutrient cycling including the use of compost and manure and other systems of sustainable management of soil and water resources.

A synthetic analysis of greenhouse gas emissions from manure amended agricultural soils in China

“…Prevalence of warm temperature in this climate type accelerates decomposition of organic C from soil pools or external sources and leads to C loss to the atmosphere. However, temperate climate regions with somewhat low temperature and precipitation have the less living biomass and the decomposition rate of organic C is often slow 14 , 73 – 75 . It also showed that in comparison with Min-F, the increment of CO 2 emission by Org-M in acid soils (pH ≤ 7.0) was larger than that in alkaline soils (pH > 7.0) regardless of upland or paddy soils, because Org-M usually increases soil pH and subsequently increases the solubility of CO 2 and the formation of bicarbonate acid 76 , leading to a reduction in CO 2 emission, especially in paddy fields.…”