Divergent responses of soil organic carbon to afforestation

Songbai Hong, Guodong Yin, Shilong Piao (), Ray Dybzinski, Nan Cong, Xiangyi Li, Kai Wang, Josep Peñuelas, Hui Zeng and Anping Chen ()
Additional contact information
Songbai Hong: Peking University
Guodong Yin: Peking University
Shilong Piao: Peking University
Ray Dybzinski: Loyola University Chicago
Nan Cong: Chinese Academy of Sciences
Xiangyi Li: Peking University
Kai Wang: Peking University
Josep Peñuelas: CREAF
Hui Zeng: Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School
Anping Chen: Colorado State University

Nature Sustainability, 2020, vol. 3, issue 9, 694-700

Abstract: Abstract Large-scale afforestation is regarded as an effective natural climate solution. However, afforestation-induced changes in soil organic C (SOC) are poorly quantified due to the paucity of large-scale sampling data. Here, we provide the first comprehensive assessment of the afforestation impact on SOC stocks with a pairwise comparative study of samples from 619 control-and-afforested plot pairs in northern China. We found context-dependent effects of afforestation on SOC: afforestation increases SOC density (SOCD) in C-poor soils but decreases SOCD in C-rich soils, especially in deeper soil. Thus, the fixed biomass/SOC ratio assumed in previous studies could overestimate the SOC enhancement by afforestation. By extrapolating the sampling data to the entire region, we estimate that afforestation increased SOC stocks in northern China by only 234.9 ± 9.6 TgC over the last three decades. The study highlights the importance of including pre-afforestation soil properties in models of soil carbon dynamics and carbon sink projections.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0557-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:natsus:v:3:y:2020:i:9:d:10.1038_s41893-020-0557-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0557-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().