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Soil Organic Carbon Stocks, Changes and CO2 Mitigation Potential by Alteration of Residue Amendment Pattern in China

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Soil Carbon

Part of the book series: Progress in Soil Science ((PROSOIL))

Abstract

Proper estimation of China’s national soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks, changes and mitigation potential are critical to adopt proper measures to protect SOC pools and to make strategies for the greenhouse gases (GHGs) mitigation. The data of SOC, bulk density from the Second State Soil Survey of China conducted in the early 1980s, and farmland CH4 and N2O emission induced by residue amendment were used to estimate the SOC pools, their changes during 1980s–2000s and farmland GHGs mitigation potential in China.

Soils were divided into paddy, upland, forest, grassland and waste land soils. The SOC stock is 89.61 Pg in China’s 870.94 Mha terrestrial areas which encompasses 2473 soil series. The annual soil organic carbon accumulation rate in farmland of China is 23.61 Tg from 1980s to 2000s.

More carbon from amended organic matter (OM) was retained in paddy soil than in upland soil, but OM amendment in paddy soil led to large CH4–C emissions, 9.95 % and 19.17 % of organic carbon inputs under intermittent and continuous flood conditions, respectively. OM amendment elimination in rice season could cut CH4–C emissions by 3.4 Tg year−1, accounting for 56 % of current CH4–C emissions (6.1 Tg) and reducing global warming potential by 24.84 Tg year−1 CO2–C equivalent, accounting for 50.3 % in China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Soil and Sustainable Agriculture, Jiangsu Biochar Engineering Center, Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 71 East Beijing Road, Nanjing, 210008, China

    Zubin Xie, Gang Liu, Qicheng Bei, Qi Liu, Zhibin Lin & Jianguo Zhu

  2. Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, 19713, USA

    Chunmei Chen

  3. Institute of Plant Production and Agroecology in the Tropics and Subtropics, University of Hohenheim, 70593, Stuttgart, Germany

    Georg Cadisch

  4. National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, 3-1-3 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8604, Japan

    Hasegawa Toshihiro

Authors
  1. Zubin Xie
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  2. Gang Liu
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  3. Qicheng Bei
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  4. Chunmei Chen
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  5. Georg Cadisch
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  6. Qi Liu
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  7. Zhibin Lin
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  8. Hasegawa Toshihiro
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  9. Jianguo Zhu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zubin Xie .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Alfred E. Hartemink

  2. Department of Soil Science, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Kevin McSweeney

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Xie, Z. et al. (2014). Soil Organic Carbon Stocks, Changes and CO2 Mitigation Potential by Alteration of Residue Amendment Pattern in China. In: Hartemink, A., McSweeney, K. (eds) Soil Carbon. Progress in Soil Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04084-4_45

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