Publication Date:
2004-06-12
Description:
The carbon sink capacity of the world's agricultural and degraded soils is 50 to 66% of the historic carbon loss of 42 to 78 gigatons of carbon. The rate of soil organic carbon sequestration with adoption of recommended technologies depends on soil texture and structure, rainfall, temperature, farming system, and soil management. Strategies to increase the soil carbon pool include soil restoration and woodland regeneration, no-till farming, cover crops, nutrient management, manuring and sludge application, improved grazing, water conservation and harvesting, efficient irrigation, agroforestry practices, and growing energy crops on spare lands. An increase of 1 ton of soil carbon pool of degraded cropland soils may increase crop yield by 20 to 40 kilograms per hectare (kg/ha) for wheat, 10 to 20 kg/ha for maize, and 0.5 to 1 kg/ha for cowpeas. As well as enhancing food security, carbon sequestration has the potential to offset fossil fuel emissions by 0.4 to 1.2 gigatons of carbon per year, or 5 to 15% of the global fossil-fuel emissions.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lal, R -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Jun 11;304(5677):1623-7.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Carbon Management and Sequestration Center, Ohio State University Columbus, OH 43210, USA. lal.1@osu.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15192216" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
*Agriculture
;
Atmosphere
;
Biomass
;
Carbon/*analysis
;
Carbon Dioxide
;
*Climate
;
Crops, Agricultural/growth & development
;
Ecosystem
;
*Food
;
Food Supply
;
Humans
;
Malnutrition
;
Poverty
;
Soil/*analysis
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
