<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">Soil organic carbon (SOC) in agricultural land forms part of the global terrestrial carbon cycle and it affects atmospheric carbon dioxide balance. SOC is sensitive to local agricultural management practices that sum up into regional SOC storage dynamics. Understanding regional carbon emission and sequestration trends is, therefore, important in formulating and implementing climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. In this study, the estimation of SOC stock and regional storage dynamics in the <italic>Ondavská Vrchovina</italic> region (North-Eastern Slovakia) cropland and grassland topsoil between 1970 and 2013 was performed with the RothC model and gridded spatial data on weather, initial SOC stock and historical land cover and land use changes. Initial SOC stock in the 0.3-m topsoil layer was estimated at 38.4 t ha−1 in 1970. The 2013 simulated value was 49.2 t ha−1, and the 1993–2013 simulated SOC stock values were within the measured data range. The total SOC storage in the study area, cropland and grassland areas, was 4.21 Mt in 1970 and 5.16 Mt in 2013, and this 0.95 Mt net SOC gain was attributed to inter-conversions of cropland and grassland areas between 1970 and 2013, which caused different organic carbon inputs to the soil during the simulation period with a strong effect on SOC stock temporal dynamics.</abstract>

Soil organic carbon (SOC) in agricultural land forms part of the global terrestrial carbon cycle and it affects atmospheric carbon dioxide balance. SOC is sensitive to local agricultural management practices that sum up into regional SOC storage dynamics. Understanding regional carbon emission and sequestration trends is, therefore, important in formulating and implementing climate change adaptation and mitigation policies. In this study, the estimation of SOC stock and regional storage dynamics in the Ondavská Vrchovina region (North-Eastern Slovakia) cropland and grassland topsoil between 1970 and 2013 was performed with the RothC model and gridded spatial data on weather, initial SOC stock and historical land cover and land use changes. Initial SOC stock in the 0.3-m topsoil layer was estimated at 38.4 t ha−1 in 1970. The 2013 simulated value was 49.2 t ha−1, and the 1993–2013 simulated SOC stock values were within the measured data range. The total SOC storage in the study area, cropland and grassland areas, was 4.21 Mt in 1970 and 5.16 Mt in 2013, and this 0.95 Mt net SOC gain was attributed to inter-conversions of cropland and grassland areas between 1970 and 2013, which caused different organic carbon inputs to the soil during the simulation period with a strong effect on SOC stock temporal dynamics.

Land Cover and Land Use Change-Driven Dynamics of Soil Organic Carbon in North-East Slovakian Croplands and Grasslands Between 1970 and 2013

Department of Geography and Applied Geoinformatics, Faculty of Humanities and Natural Sciences

Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Agrobiology and Food Resources

Department of Natural Environment, Faculty of Forestry

Department of Environmental Management, Faculty of Management

Ekológia (Bratislava)

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Soil organic carbon (SOC) in agricultural land forms part of the global terrestrial carbon cycle and it affects atmospheric carbon dioxide balance. SOC is...

Land Cover and Land Use Change-Driven Dynamics of Soil Organic Carbon in North-East Slovakian Croplands and Grasslands Between 1970 and 2013

Published Online: Jun 08, 2020

Page range: 159 - 173

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/eko-2020-0012

Keywords
soil organic carbon stock, regional soil organic carbon storage, soil organic carbon modelling, RothC, legacy soil data

© 2020 Rastislav Skalský et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Land Cover and Land Use Change-Driven Dynamics of Soil Organic Carbon in North-East Slovakian Croplands and Grasslands Between 1970 and 2013

Published Online: Jun 08, 2020

Page range: 159 - 173

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/eko-2020-0012

Keywordssoil organic carbon stock, regional soil organic carbon storage, soil organic carbon modelling, RothC, legacy soil data

© 2020 Rastislav Skalský et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
soil organic carbon stock, regional soil organic carbon storage, soil organic carbon modelling, RothC, legacy soil data