Relative Importance of Plant Species Composition and Environmental Factors in Affecting Soil Carbon Stocks of Alpine Pastures (NW Italy)

Simone Ravetto Enri, Fabio Petrella, Fabrizio Ungaro, Laura Zavattaro, Andrea Mainetti, Giampiero Lombardi and Michele Lonati
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Simone Ravetto Enri: Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Torino, 10095 Torino, Italy
Fabio Petrella: Istituto per le Piante da Legno e l’Ambiente (IPLA), 10132 Torino, Italy
Fabrizio Ungaro: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per la BioEconomia, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy
Laura Zavattaro: Department of Veterinary Sciences, University of Torino, 10095 Torino, Italy
Andrea Mainetti: Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Torino, 10095 Torino, Italy
Giampiero Lombardi: Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Torino, 10095 Torino, Italy
Michele Lonati: Department of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences, University of Torino, 10095 Torino, Italy

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 11, 1-24

Abstract: Alpine pastures are agricultural systems with a high provision of ecosystem services, which include carbon (C) stocking. Particularly, the soil organic C (SOC) stocks of Alpine pastures may play a pivotal role in counteracting global climate change. Even if the importance of pasture SOC has been stated by several research studies, especially by comparing different land uses, little is known about the role of plant species composition. We studied a wide sample of 324 pastures in the north-western Italian Alps by performing coupled vegetation and soil surveys. Climatic (i.e., mean annual precipitation), topographic (i.e., elevation, slope, southness), vegetation (i.e., the first three dimensions of a non-metric multid imensional scaling—NMDS), and soil (i.e., pH) parameters were considered as independent variables in a generalised linear model accounting for SOC stocks in the 0–30 cm depth. Pasture SOC was significantly affected by precipitation (positively) and by pH (negatively) but not by topography. However, the higher influence was exerted by vegetation through the first NMDS dimension, which depicted a change in plant species along a thermic-altitudinal gradient. Our research highlighted the remarkable importance of vegetation in regulating SOC stocks in Alpine pastures, confirming the pivotal role of these semi-natural agricultural systems in the global scenario of climate change.

Keywords: grassland; elevation; forage; mountain; pH; precipitation; slope; vegetation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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