Agroforestry: Soil Organic Carbon and Its Carbon Sequestration Potential

Abstract

Challenges to the lives of human being and other living communities by changing climate due to increase in greenhouse gases (GHGs) concentration, majority of carbon dioxide (CO2) are leading in a miserable way. There calls a diversified land-use system to face the alarming issue of crop productivity as well as to challenge the effect of climate changes (CCs). Moreover, the releasing of CO2 from the soil due to intensive cultivation on limited land resources without considering its future land degradation is also adding another challenge to farming community. In this context, the practice of agroforestry has been realized and shown promising land use system. Agroforestry has started gaining attention across the globe and the aspect of carbon sequestration (CS) potential recognized a big asset in terms of CC mitigation approach. The practices of agroforestry help to improve the soil physico-chemical and biological properties by continuous addition of litter in the soil surface. Since, soil organic carbon (SOC) is having the largest contribution in carbon pool among the terrestrial ecosystem, which is estimated to be over 1550 Pg C at 1m soil depth. Considering the potential of soil ecosystem to store carbon, it is attracting considerable attention to curb the issues of CC in near future. The practices of agroforestry involving the minimal disturbance of soil and continuous cover of litter helps in stabilizing the soil organic and making the room for vast CS opportunities in the soil. 120It is believed that other ecological, biological, and edaphic factors, several social factors such as adoption of different management practices like application of fertilizers, irrigation supply, application of pesticides, herbicides, etc. could also affect the SOC sequestration potential under agroforestry system (AFs) by influencing the soil aggregates stability. In this context, several studies conducted in different places of world, however, their reports have shown large variation in estimating the CS potential in AFs across the world due to non-homogeneous estimation.