SOC Stock Changes and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Following Tropical Land Use Conversions to Plantation Crops on Mineral Soils, with a Special Focus on Oil Palm and Rubber Plantations

Sanjutha Shanmugam, Ram C. Dalal, Hans Joosten, R. J. Raison and Goh Kah Joo
Additional contact information
Sanjutha Shanmugam: School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia
Ram C. Dalal: School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia
Hans Joosten: Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, University of Greifswald, partner in the Greifswald Mire Centre, 17487 Greifswald, Germany
R. J. Raison: The Mullion Group, Canberra, ACT 2607, Australia
Goh Kah Joo: Advanced Agriecological Research Sdn. Bhd., 47810 Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Agriculture, 2018, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-17

Abstract: The increasing global demand for vegetable oils has resulted in a significant increase in the area under oil palm in the tropics during the last couple of decades, and this is projected to increase further. The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil discourages the conversion of peatlands to oil palm and rubber plantations. However, our understanding of the effects on soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of land use conversion is incomplete, especially for mineral soils under primary forests, secondary forests, rubber and other perennial plantations in the tropics. In this review we synthesised information on SOC stocks and GHG emissions from tropical mineral soils under forest, oil palm and rubber plantations and other agroecosystems across the tropical regions. We found that the largest SOC losses occurred after land use conversion from primary forest to oil palm and rubber plantations. Secondary forest and pasture lands showed lower SOC losses as well as total GHG (CO 2 , N 2 O and CH 4 ) emissions when converted to oil palm and rubber plantations. However, due to the limited data available on all three GHG emissions, there remains high uncertainty in GHG emissions estimates, and regional GHG accounting is more reliable. We recommend long-term monitoring of oil palm and other perennial plantations established on tropical mineral soils on different soil types and regions on SOC stock changes and total GHG emissions and evaluate appropriate management practices to optimise production and sustainable economic returns, and minimise environmental impact.

Keywords: land use change; soil organic carbon stock; GHG emissions; agroecosystems; oil palm plantation; rubber plantation; tropical forest conversion; mineral soil (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: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/8/9/133/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/8/9/133/ (text/html)

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:gam:jagris:v:8:y:2018:i:9:p:133-:d:166994

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().