Abstract
Abandoned agricultural lands often accumulate soil carbon (C) following depletion of soil C by cultivation. The potential for this recovery to provide significant C storage benefits depends on the rate of soil C accumulation, which, in turn, may depend on nutrient supply rates. We tracked soil C for almost four decades following intensive agricultural soil disturbance along an experimentally imposed gradient in nitrogen (N) added annually in combination with other macro- and micro-nutrients. Soil %C accumulated over the course of the study in unfertilized control plots leading to a gain of 6.1 Mg C ha−1 in the top 20 cm of soil. Nutrient addition increased soil %C accumulation leading to a gain of 17.8 Mg C ha−1 in fertilized plots, nearly a threefold increase over the control plots. These results demonstrate that substantial increases in soil C in successional grasslands following agricultural abandonment occur over decadal timescales, and that C gain is increased by high supply rates of soil nutrients. In addition, soil %C continued to increase for decades under elevated nutrient supply, suggesting that short-term nutrient addition experiments underestimate the effects of soil nutrients on soil C accumulation.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 4909-4920 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Global change biology |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 19 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Oct 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Keywords
- LTER
- disturbance
- ecosystem ecology
- global change
- grasslands
- recovery