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WASCAL (West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use). Work Package 2.5 Soil carbon dynamics, soil fertility and soil degradation under climate and land use change
Project
Project code: keine Angabe
Contract period: 01.10.2012
- 30.04.2016
Purpose of research: Applied research
Soils play a crucial role in agricultural and natural systems. They provide the fundamental background for plant production and ecosystem services. Soil quality (fertility, soil carbon content (SOC), soil properties) is severely affected by climate and land use change as turnover rates depend on temperature and soil moisture, and land management directly influences soil properties. Soil degradation by water erosion and nutrient and SOC depletion are the key processes concerning soil degradation and are directly dependent on climate and land use. Adapted soil and land management will be extremely important for food security. Strong feedbacks exist between soil nutrient supply, soil carbon dynamics, soil degradation by water and agricultural production. Due to these reasons, this WP is of central importance for a number of other investigations.
The WP aims at studying SOC dynamics in relation to soil erosion by water and soil nutrient supplying capacity under various climate and land use change scenarios. This will allow developing recommendations concerning sustainable land use and land management. This work is based on the hypothesis that both, climate and land use changes adversely affect SOC stocks. Ecosystem resilience however is expected to allow recovering of SOC stocks to a certain extent which remains to be determined. This SOC recovery is seen to be intrinsically linked to the dynamics of soil nutrient supply. Concerning soil erosion, we hypothesize that land use change will have a higher impact than climate change on a short term. Watershed management will help reducing soil erosion (on-site effects) as well as siltation of reservoirs (off-site effects).
The work will be carried out in the WASCAL focal watersheds and will cover investigations from the local (point) to the watershed scale. The impact of land use change on SOC dynamics, soil fertility and nutrient supplying capacity, and soil erosion will be evaluated following the false chronosequence approach, i.e. we will sample several experimental plots within one watershed that have been converted into agricultural fields at different (known) points in time in the past. Using regionalization approaches, maps of soil carbon stocks, soil fertility, and soil degradation status will be developed to be used by other WPs.
Knowledge and data are integrated using dynamic simulation models describing soil carbon dynamics linked to soil nutrient availability as well as soil erosion and sedimentation. Using these model approaches, the sensitivity of the system concerning land use and climate change can be analyzed. After calibrating and validating the models, they will be applied for scenario analysis. The complex, spatial and temporal distributed results will be aggregated to indicators which can be used in the integrated assessment and for balancing management options. Important aspects like quantifying the potential contribution to the goals of the Clean Development Mechanism and the effect of Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) on soil degradation and soil carbon dynamics will be studied.
Section overview
Subjects
- Soil science
- Climate Change
Collaborative Project
WASCAL (West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use) Research Program
Framework programme
BMBF - FONA (Research for Sustainable Development) - Research Framework Programme for Sustainability
