Title:Captura de carbono en suelos agricolas reforestados: estabilizacion del C capturado por proteccion fisica (CronoCarb). AGL2009-13400-C05-01
Funding Agency: Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia
Participating organizations:
Duration, from: 2010 to: 2013
PI: Rovira P
Subproject Researchers: Casals P.
Carbon sequestration in soils and vegetation is an interesting way for decreasing the impact of Climate Change driven by the increasing atmospheric CO2 levels. The potential for carbon sequestration in Spain is assumed to be very high. The reason is the abbandonment of agricultural activites, resulting in a widespread release of old agricultural fields which in this way have become prone to act as carbon sinks. An experimental quantification of the C sequestration rates is only possible by means of Eddy-Covariance techniques, or through the study of chronosequences of land use change. Both approaches are slow and expensive; as a consequence, for Spain there is little field information (the most credible one) about how the C stocks in old agricultural soils are really changing as a result of their conversion to forest soils. CRONOCARB aims to substantially increase the amounf of field information available, through the study of a big number of afforestation chronosequences, throughout the spanish territory. Owing to the variety in climate, soil and tree species, it is not possible to cover all the possible situations, but it should be possible to obtain data for the most common ones. In addition to merely studying the accumulation of C in soil and vegetation, we aim to study also the changes in soil chemical fertility, the degree of stabilisation of the sequestered C, and the physical and chemical processes that result in such a stabilisation. The final aim of the project is to deliver a predictive model for C sequestration, based on the calibration of already existing models, and useful also for situations not directly studied in this research project.