Simulation of the Use of a Soil-Monitoring Network to Verify Carbon Sequestration in Soils: Will Changes in Organic Carbon Stocks be Detectable?

Abstract

Within the Kyoto protocol, the Bonn and Marrakech accords (articles 3.3 and 3.4) stipulate that some voluntary activities leading to an additional carbon sequestration in soils could be accounted as carbon sinks in national greenhouse gas inventories. These additional carbon stocks should be verifiable. In this work, the feasibility of a statistical verification of the effects of changes in land uses or cultural practices in soil organic carbon stocks by using a soil monitoring network in France was assessed, based on a systematic sampling of sites located on a 16 × 16-km2 grid. Among the scenarios that were tested, the average duration necessary to detect a significant change ranged from 3 to 15 yr. And, in some cases, this duration can reach 10 to 25 yr. This implies that an increase of the number of sites might be necessary or that new specific networks will have to be implemented if we aim to have a reliable control during short time steps.