Abstract
The Indian Eastern Himalayan region (IEHR) is a biodiversity hotspot, but traditional agricultural practices (jhum) and land use change (LUC) to settled plantations can exacerbate the issues like degradation of soil quality and loss of soil organic carbon (SOC). The degradation of soil quality and loss of SOC, as affected by forest conversion to other land uses, have become the focus of policymakers as well as scientific research. Moreover, soil system is highly complex and heterogeneous, and field measurements of SOC change are a long process, which leads to the development of simulation models. Presently, modeling soil C dynamics has been proved an effective tool to simulate the effects of land use, LUC, and climate change, but this type of study is rather limited in IEHR. This chapter deals in providing the estimates of changes in SOC stocks, due to change in land use and their future trends. In different studies, it has been found that SOC stocks under forest will not be affected due to climate change, while under jhum lands, the decline in SOC stocks is more serious. However, conversion of jhum lands to settled plantations like tea and cashew plantations is a better option to increase SOC stocks and to improve the economic status of farmers of IEHR. In addition, many types of models are available to simulate SOC dynamics, but their choice will depend on the input data available, and if data availability is limited, models like RothC or statistical techniques will be more useful.
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Mishra, G., Francaviglia, R. (2023). Soil Organic Carbon Modeling in Indian Eastern Himalayan Region: A Review of Case Studies. In: Mishra, G., Giri, K., Nath, A.J., Francaviglia, R. (eds) Soil Carbon Dynamics in Indian Himalayan Region. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3303-7_14
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