Using soils to mitigate carbon emissions: sufficient to reach the EU’s target of cutting its emissions to 20% below of the 1990 levels by 2020
A recently published article by IES scientists finds that making alternative uses of arable land could potentially help capture significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.
<p>The article, published in Global Change Biology, investigates the potential carbon sequestration of six of the most representative agricultural management practices on arable soils, and finds that the conversion of arable land to grassland results in the highest potential soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration rates, whereas the conversion of grassland to arable land has the effect of strongly increasing the amount of carbon losses to the atmosphere.
As the largest terrestrial pool of carbon, SOC plays a key role in the carbon cycle, and can play a role in mitigating GHG emissions.</p>
