EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Modeling impacts of management on farmland soil carbon dynamics along a climate gradient in Northwest China during 1981–2000

Fan Zhang, Changsheng Li, Zheng Wang, Stanley Glidden, Danielle S. Grogan, Xuxiang Li, Yan Cheng and Steve Frolking

Ecological Modelling, 2015, vol. 312, issue C, 1-10

Abstract: A regional study was conducted to investigate historical variations in soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in agricultural lands along a climate gradient in the Loess Plateau. A process-based model, Denitrification–Decomposition (DNDC) was used to simulate SOC dynamics. A database containing spatially differentiated climate, soil and farming management information was linked to DNDC to support the regional simulations. DNDC was run for all croplands in the Loess Plateau for 20 years. Simulation results demonstrated that SOC stocks in the region amounted to 1.15 Pg C and the SOC content of 65% farmland was below China's national level. Crop management could effectively improve SOC storage and available water played a key role in controlling cropland SOC dynamics. Analyses of SOC change and climate variability indicate that the regional SOC increased along the moisture gradient. We found that (1) higher annual precipitation increased crop productivity, particularly in rain-fed cropping systems, adding more crop residue (i.e., litter) production to the soils that favors SOC accumulation; and (2) irrigation played a crucial role in maintaining the SOC content in areas with low precipitation, where the enhanced irrigation capacity could substantially elevate the SOC storage in the semi-arid domain. The soil in the Loess Plateau is likely to accumulate SOC and to produce a carbon equilibrium rapidly when available water and water use efficiency increase.

Keywords: Soil organic carbon; Crop management; Climate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380015002033
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:312:y:2015:i:c:p:1-10

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2015.05.006

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Modelling is currently edited by Brian D. Fath

More articles in Ecological Modelling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:312:y:2015:i:c:p:1-10