Soil Carbon Stock Under Different Land Uses of Southern Agroclimatic Zone of Tamil Nadu, India

A.C. Surya Prabha; K. Arulmani; R. Velumani; K.S. Rathnam; M. Senthivelu

Abstract

AbstractSoil organic carbon (SOC) has long been identified as a factor that is important to soil fertility as well as to the environment because of huge carbon sequestration potential of soils. Estimating C pools under existing land uses provides baseline data to project C sequestration over time. The present study was undertaken to estimate the SOC stock in dominant soil series under different land uses of Southern Agroclimatic zone of Tamil Nadu, India. Land uses selected for the study were forests, agriculture, agroforestry and plantations. For the analysis of carbon, soil samples were collected from Nanguneri and Mayamankurichi soil series of Southern Agroclimatic zone. The soil samples were manually fractionated into three aggregate size classes viz., macro-aggregates (250–2000 μm), micro-aggregates (53–250 μm) and silt and clay-sized fraction (<53 μm). In Nanguneri series, SOC stock was highest under forest land use in the different size fractions viz. macrosized fraction (74.2 Mg ha-1), microsized fraction (77.0 Mg ha-1) and silt+clay sized fraction (79.8 Mg ha-1) at 0–30 cm depth. SOC stock was lowest under agriculture land use. Maximum SOC stock was registered under forest land use (47.0 Mg ha-1) in macro-sized fraction, microsized fraction (45.9 Mg ha-1) and silt+clay sized fraction (52.4 Mg ha-1) at 0–30 cm depth in Mayamankurichi series, followed by agroforestry and plantation. Maximum SOC was retained in the silt+clay sized fraction (< 53 μm) in all the land uses.Keywords: Carbon sequestration, soil series, land use, organic carbon stock, FRBD, SPSSCite this ArticleA.C. Surya Prabha, K. Arulmani, R.Velumani, K.S. Rathnam, M. Senthivelu .Soil Carbon Stock Under Different LandUses of Southern Agroclimatic Zone ofTamil Nadu, India . Research & Reviews:Journal of Agricultural Science andTechnology . 2019; 3 1 7p.