Abstract
Aims
Vegetation restoration has been widely implemented to achieve carbon (C) sequestration and prevent land degradation, and this study aims to evaluate the ecosystem C pools and C sequestration effectiveness of different land-use types.
Methods
In this study, the plant biomass C stock, litter C stock, soil organic C (SOC) stock and ecosystem C sequestration in Zanthoxylum bungeanum plantations (with stand ages of 28, 20, 15 and 8 years, abbreviated as ZB28, ZB20, ZB15 and ZB8, respectively), abandoned land (AL) and farmland (FL) were estimated.
Results
(1) the plant biomass and biomass C stock of above-and below-ground increased after farmland conversion, and all of them ranked as ZB28 > ZB20 > ZB15 > AL > ZB8 > FL; (2) the litter stock and C stock, and SOC concentration and stock of different land-use types ranked as AL > Z. bungeanum plantations > FL, and these indices increased with the stand age; (3) the C stock of the ecosystem in FL was 115.4 Mg C ha−1, and the C stock of the ecosystem increased by 8.9–66.6 Mg C ha−1 and 52.4 Mg C ha−1 after the conversion of FL to Z. bungeanum plantations and AL, respectively; (4) and soil C sequestration accounts for 55.6–83.6% of ecosystem C sequestration after farmland conversion.
Conclusions
This implies that the conversion of farmland to Z. bungeanum plantations was the best approach in the arid valley area when the ecosystem C sequestration and economic benefits were considered.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported financially by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Program No. 2020YFD1000700), the Projects of Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (Grant No. 2021YFYZ0032) and the Sichuan Characteristic Economic Crops Innovation Team Project of National Modern Agricultural Technology Systems (sccxtd-2020-12).
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Lv, C., Saba, T., Wang, J. et al. Ecosystem carbon sequestration of Zanthoxylum bungeanum plantations under the farmland conversion in the arid valley of the upper reaches of Yangtze River, China. Plant Soil 494, 235–250 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06268-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-023-06268-0