Long-term Development of Organic Matter of Sandy Soils Under Influence of Fertilization and Climate

Abstract

The Static Nutient Deficiency Experiment at the location of Thyrow/Germany exists since 1937 and remained unchanged in its management during the whole period of experimentation. From the beginning of the 60th soil samples were collected every year in the autumn and the organic carbon content was determined constantly using the same method. For the period 1965-2000 a decrease of carbon content could be found in an order of 15% (average of all variants in the experiment). The air and soil temperatures showed rising tendencies. Since 1965 the average air temperature annually increased by 0.03°C and the soil temperature in the depth 0.1-0.2m by 0.02°C, respectively. According to the rising temperatures in this period the number of days with a soil temperature higher than 6°C increased by 3.8 days per decade of years. The evaluation of data by regression analysis revealed that in average the organic carbon content is reduced by 1.5mg per 100g soil each day which shows a higher soil temperature than 6°C.