Details zur Publikation

Kategorie Textpublikation
Referenztyp Zeitschriften
DOI 10.3390/agronomy13041159
Lizenz creative commons licence
Titel (primär) Modelling soil organic carbon dynamics of arable land across scales: a simplified assessment of alternative management practices on the level of administrative units
Autor Witing, F.; Volk, M.; Franko, U.
Quelle Agronomy
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
Department CLE; BOSYS
Band/Volume 13
Heft 4
Seite von art. 1159
Sprache englisch
Topic T5 Future Landscapes
Supplements https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/agronomy13041159/s1
Keywords soil organic carbon; soil carbon sequestration; four-per-mille initiative; scaling; climate change mitigation; NUTS; administrative regions; reduced tillage; field grass; cover crops
Abstract Regional assessments of soil organic carbon (SOC) trends and the carbon sequestration potential of alternative management practices (AMP) are highly relevant for developing climate change mitigation strategies for the agricultural sector. Such studies could benefit from simplified SOC modeling approaches on the scale of administrative units as this often corresponds to the level of policy-making and data availability. However, there is a risk of systematic errors in such scaling operations. To overcome this problem, we performed a scaling experiment where we simulated the SOC dynamics of the arable soils of the State of Saxony (Germany) across a series of scales using the CANDY Carbon Balance (CCB) model. Specifically, we developed model set-ups on four different administrative levels (NUTS1, NUTS2, NUTS3, and LAU) and evaluated the simulation results of the upscaled models against a 500 m grid-based reference model. Furthermore, we quantified the carbon sequestration potential of selected AMP scenarios (addressing field grass, cover crops, and conservation tillage) across all scales. The upscaled model set-ups adequately simulated the SOC trends of Saxon arable land compared to the grid-based reference simulation (scaling error: 0.8–3.8%), while providing significant benefits for model application, data availability and runtime. The carbon sequestration potential of the AMP scenarios (1.33 Mt C until 2050) was slightly overestimated (+0.07–0.09 Mt C) by the upscaled model set-ups. Regardless of the scale of model set-up, we showed that the use of aggregated statistical input data could lead to a systematic underestimation of SOC trends. LAU and NUTS3 levels were shown to be a suitable compromise for effectively quantifying SOC dynamics and allowed for an acceptable spatial prioritization of AMPs. Such simplified, scale-adapted assessments are valuable for cross-regional comparisons and for communication to and among decision-makers, and might provide a quantitative basis for discussions on the effectiveness of AMPs in various stakeholder processes.
dauerhafte UFZ-Verlinkung https://www.ufz.de/index.php?en=20939&ufzPublicationIdentifier=22802
Witing, F., Volk, M., Franko, U. (2023):
Modelling soil organic carbon dynamics of arable land across scales: a simplified assessment of alternative management practices on the level of administrative units
Agronomy-Basel 13 (4), art. 1159 10.3390/agronomy13041159