Amount, distribution and controls of the soil organic carbon storage loss in the degraded China's grasslands.

Sci Total Environ

State Key Laboratory of Herbage Improvement and Grassland Agro-Ecosystems, College of Pastoral Agriculture Science and Technology, Lanzhou University, 768 West Jiayuguan Road, Gansu Province, Lanzhou 730020, China. Electronic address:

Published: September 2024

AI Article Synopsis

  • Over 80% of China's grasslands are damaged, which means they can't hold as much carbon in the soil.
  • This loss affects China's ability to reduce carbon emissions and reach its climate goals.
  • Research showed that degraded grasslands lose a lot of carbon storage, with the most damaged areas losing up to 59% of their soil carbon compared to healthy grasslands.

Article Abstract

More than 80 % of China's grasslands are classified as degraded, and the loss of soil carbon storage due to degradation has a significant impact on China's terrestrial carbon sinks as well as carbon neutrality targets. The loss of soil carbon storage in degraded grasslands can serve as a benchmark for quantifying the carbon sequestration capacity of restored grasslands in the future. Here, above- and below-ground biomass, soil organic carbon (SOC) content at various depths (0-100 cm) and soil bulk density were collected from 226 degradation sequences around China. The above information was integrated and statistically analyzed to quantify the difference of SOC storage between the degraded and natural grassland at national scale. The result showed that grassland degradation led to a significant reduction in SOC storage across different depths. SOC (0-100 cm) of degraded grassland decreased by 39 % compared to that of natural grassland, ranging from 21 % in the lightly degraded sites to 59 % of the extremely degraded sites. 15 potential predictors were used to estimate the national amount of these differences of 0-20 cm depth SOC storage as 5.29 ± 1.59 Pg C. This considerable carbon storage gap implies the necessity of China's grassland restoration project in achieving carbon neutrality goals in the future.

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Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.173848DOI Listing

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