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The Potential Impact of Agricultural Management and Climate Change on Soil Organic Carbon of the North Central Region of the United States

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Abstract

Soil organic carbon (SOC) represents a significant pool of carbon within the biosphere. Climatic shifts in temperature and precipitation have a major influence on the decomposition and amount of SOC stored within an ecosystem. We have linked net primary production algorithms, which include the impact of enhanced atmospheric CO2 on plant growth, to the Soil Organic Carbon Resources And Transformations in EcoSystems (SOCRATES) model to develop a SOC map for the North Central Region of the United States between the years 1850 and 2100 in response to agricultural activity and climate conditions generated by the CSIRO Mk2 Global Circulation Model (GCM) and based on the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) IS92a emission scenario. We estimate that the current day (1990) stocks of SOC in the top 10 cm of the North Central Region to be 4692 Mt, and 8090 Mt in the top 20 cm of soil. This is 19% lower than the pre-settlement steady state value predicted by the SOCRATES model. By the year 2100, with temperature and precipitation increasing across the North Central Region by an average of 3.9°C and 8.1 cm, respectively, SOCRATES predicts SOC stores of the North Central Region to decline by 11.5 and 2% (in relation to 1990 values) for conventional and conservation tillage scenarios, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the CSREES-supported Consortium for Agricultural Soil Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases (CASMGS), with the NSF support from the KBS LTER project, and is a contribution of the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station. We thank two anonymous reviewers and the Subject Editor for constructive suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Natural Resource Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, 4001, Australia

    Peter R. Grace

  2. W.K. Kellogg Biological Station, Michigan State University, Hickory Corners, Michigan, 49060, USA

    Peter R. Grace & G. Philip Robertson

  3. Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 48824, USA

    Manuel Colunga-Garcia & Stuart H. Gage

  4. Computational Ecology and Visualization Laboratory, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 48824, USA

    Manuel Colunga-Garcia, Stuart H. Gage & Gene R. Safir

  5. Department of Crop and Soil Sciences, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 48824, USA

    G. Philip Robertson

  6. Department of Plant Pathology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 48824, USA

    Gene R. Safir

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  1. Peter R. Grace
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  2. Manuel Colunga-Garcia
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  3. Stuart H. Gage
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  4. G. Philip Robertson
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  5. Gene R. Safir
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Correspondence to Peter R. Grace.

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Grace, P.R., Colunga-Garcia, M., Gage, S.H. et al. The Potential Impact of Agricultural Management and Climate Change on Soil Organic Carbon of the North Central Region of the United States. Ecosystems 9, 816–827 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-004-0096-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-004-0096-9

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