Simulating the effects of management practices on cropland soilorganic carbon changes in the Temperate Prairies Ecoregion of theUnited States from 1980 to 2012

Authors

Zhengpeng Li, South Dakota State UniversityFollow
Shuguang Liu, USGS, EROS
Zhengxi Tan, ASRC Federal InuTeq
Terry L. Sohl, USGS, EROS
Yiping Wu, Xi'an Jiaotong University

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2017

Citation

Ecological Modelling 364 (2017) 68–79

Comments

© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

This document is a U.S. government work and is not subject to copyright in the United States.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2017.09.017

Abstract

Understanding the effects of management practices on soil organic carbon (SOC) is important for design-ing effective policies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in agriculture. In the Midwest United States,management practices in the croplands have been improved to increase crop production and reduce SOCloss since the 1980s. Many studies of SOC dynamics in croplands have been performed to understandthe effects of management, but the results are still not conclusive. This study quantified SOC dynam-ics in the Midwest croplands from 1980 to 2012 with the General Ensemble Biogeochemical ModellingSystem (GEMS) and available management data. Our results showed that the total SOC in the croplandsdecreased from 1190 Tg C in 1980 to 1107 TgC in 1995, and then increased to 1176 TgC in 2012. Contin-uous cropping and intensive tillage may have driven SOC loss in the early period. The increase of cropproduction and adoption of conservation tillage increased the total SOC so that the decrease in the totalSOC stock after 32 years was only 1%. The small change in average SOC did not reflect the large spatialvariations of SOC change in the region. Major SOC losses occurred in the north and south of the region,where SOC baseline values were high and cropland production was low. The SOC gains took place in thecentral part of the region where SOC baseline values were moderate and cropland production was higherthan the other areas. We simulated multiple land-use land-cover (LULC) change scenarios and analyzedthe results. The analysis showed that among all the LULC changes, agricultural technology that increasedcropland production had the greatest impact on SOC changes, followed by the tillage practices, changesin crop species, and the conversions of cropland to other land use. Information on management practiceinduced spatial variation in SOC can be useful for policy makers and farm managers to develop long-termmanagement strategies for increasing SOC sequestration in different areas.