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Changes in soil organic carbon during 22 years of pastures, cropping or integrated crop/livestock systems in the Brazilian Cerrado

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Abstract

In Brazil’s central savanna region, government policy is to encourage the conversion of conventional plough tillage (PT) agriculture to no-till (NT) and raise the productivity of under-utilized pastures, including their conversion to integrated crop-livestock (ICL) systems, with the objective of increasing soil organic carbon (SOC) at the expense of atmospheric carbon dioxide. An experiment was established in 1991 by liming and fertilizing at two levels an area of native vegetation (NV). The treatments, replicated in randomized plots, included pastures, continuous cropping and ICL systems under PT or NT. The aim of this study was to quantify the SOC accumulation to 100 cm depth under these treatments over time. The high C:N ratios suggested that there was a high proportion of charcoal present in the soil. Increasing fertilizer inputs had no overall significant effect on SOC stocks. Stocks of SOC changed little under pastures. Analyses of 13C abundance showed that higher fertilizer inputs increased the decomposition rate of C derived from NV under pure grass pastures. Continuous cropping under NT preserved SOC and under PT there were significant losses. The highest SOC stocks were found under ILP treatments, but not all ILP treatments accumulated SOC even under NT. These results indicate that government initiatives to substitute PT with NT and to intensify beef cattle production will have only modest short-term gains in SOC accumulation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to all the field workers and technicians at Embrapa Cerrados who have maintained this experiment since 1991. The running of the experiment at Embrapa Cerrados was almost solely funded by different projects of Embrapa. The analyses were funded by Embrapa, the Brazilian National Research Council (CNPq) and the Rio State Research Foundation (FAPERJ). The authors SACSA and JMS, gratefully acknowledge their post-doctoral and PhD fellowships, respectively, and the authors CPJ, BJRA, SU and RMB grants and fellowships from CNPq and FAPERJ. The diligent work of Renato Moutinho da Rocha in the operation of the total CN analysers and the isotope-ratio mass spectrometers is gratefully acknowledged along with that of the team of the agricultural chemistry laboratory for Kjeldahl and soil fertility analyses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science, Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro, BR 465, Km 07, Seropédica, RJ, 23890-000, Brazil

    Selenobaldo A. C. de Sant-Anna & Jerusa M. Sá

  2. Embrapa Agrobiologia, Rodovia BR 465, Km 07, Seropédica, Rio de Janeiro, 23891-000, Brazil

    Claudia P. Jantalia, Bruno J. R. Alves, Segundo Urquiaga & Robert M. Boddey

  3. Embrapa Cerrados, CP 08223, Planaltina, DF, 73301-970, Brazil

    Lourival Vilela & Robélio L. Marchão

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  1. Selenobaldo A. C. de Sant-Anna
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  2. Claudia P. Jantalia
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  3. Jerusa M. Sá
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  4. Lourival Vilela
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Correspondence to Robert M. Boddey.

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de Sant-Anna, S.A.C., Jantalia, C.P., Sá, J.M. et al. Changes in soil organic carbon during 22 years of pastures, cropping or integrated crop/livestock systems in the Brazilian Cerrado. Nutr Cycl Agroecosyst 108, 101–120 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-016-9812-z

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