Abstract
Soil has a major role in sequestering atmospheric CO2. This has further benefits and potential to improve soil fertility and food production, mitigate climate change, restore land degradation, and conserve ecosystem biodiversity. However, its health is increasingly being threatened by the growing population, land degradation and climate change effects. Despite its importance, soil organic carbon (SOC) is understudied in the tropics. This paper reviews how managing forests in tropical ecosystems can benefit SOC sequestration and land restoration. Sequestered SOC has the potential to improve soil fertility, as well as to reduce both land degradation and atmospheric CO2 emissions. It further improves soil structure, aggregation and water infiltration, enhances soil faunal activity and boosts nutrient cycling (C, N, P and S). Managing forest ecosystems is crucial to boost C sequestration, mitigate climate change and restore degraded lands, besides other ecosystem services they provide. Apart from managing natural forests and planted forests, afforesting, reforesting marginal or degraded lands especially when associated with specific practices (organic residue management, introducing nitrogen-fixing species) boost C storage (in both soil and biomass) and foster co-benefits as soil health improvement, food production, land restoration and mitigation of climate change. Improved soil health as a result of sequestered C is confirmed by enhanced physical, biological and chemical soil fertility (e.g., sequestered C stability through its link to N and P cycling driven by soil biota) which foster and sustain soil health.
Highlights
In twenty-five years, the world’s forested area has decreased 31%, i.e., from 4128 million ha in 1990 to 3999 million ha in 2015
Apart from managing natural forests and planted forests, afforesting, reforesting marginal or degraded lands especially when associated with specific practices boost C storage and foster co-benefits as soil health improvement, food production, land restoration and mitigation of climate change
Numerous papers recorded by the initial search contained summaries, documentaries, opinions and general comments on soil organic carbon or forest ecosystems or climate change or land restoration
Summary
In twenty-five years, the world’s forested area has decreased 31%, i.e., from 4128 million ha in 1990 to 3999 million ha in 2015. The overall C cycle in tropical forest ecosystems both natural and planted is roughly schematized (Figure 1 [4]) Their capacity for sequestering atmospheric C estimated using two atmospheric inversion models (MACC-II and Jena CarboScope) and 10 dynamic global vegetation models (TRENDY), has even increased the most over the last two decades, making them crucial in mitigating climate change [13]. Amongst these tropical forest ecosystems, there are three main rainforest basins, i.e., the Amazon basin being the largest, the Congo basin and Southeast Asia the second and third, respectively [14] Managing forest in these regions is, vital to foster C sequestration with further benefits on land restoration (degraded forests and other lands), mitigating climate change and preserving natural forests and ecosystem biodiversity [15]. In addition to climate change impacts on tropical forest ecosystems, soil health including C status is threatened due to the increasingly growing population, soil fertility and food depletion, leading to growing land degradation [19,20]
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