Abstract
Measurements of crop yield and soil carbon in the Bad Lauchstädt long-term fertiliser experiment were analysed with the FASSET model. The model satisfactorily predicted yield and soil carbon development in four treatments: no fertiliser, mineral fertiliser, farmyard manure and farmyard manure plus mineral fertiliser. However, there was a residual between the observed and simulated yield, which was correlated with year. This could be attributed to an increase in observed yields during the last six decades. Scenario analysis showed that the most probable explanation for this yield increase was the use of new crop varieties and/or pesticides, while the increase in atmospheric CO2 and changes in local N deposition were of lesser importance. The rise in CO2 thus only explained 9–37% of the yield increase. The observed and simulated developments in soil carbon were quite different in the four treatments. However, the changes within each treatment for different scenarios were much smaller than the substantial difference between treatments. Thus, it was concluded that the type of nutrient applied was more important than development in CO2 concentration or N deposition in determining soil carbon.
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Acknowledgements
Willem Asman is thanked for data and help with the N deposition scenarios. The work was supported by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries under the research programme “Agriculture from a holistic resource perspective”. We also wish to thank Margit Schacht for greatly improving the readability of the paper.
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Berntsen, J., Petersen, B.M. & Olesen, J.E. Simulating trends in crop yield and soil carbon in a long-term experiment—effects of rising CO2, N deposition and improved cultivation. Plant Soil 287, 235–245 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-006-9070-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-006-9070-y