Seeing the forest not for the carbon

why concentrating on land-use-induced carbon stock changes of soils in Brazil can be climate-unfriendly

verfasst von

Jens Boy, Simone Strey, Regine Schönenberg, Robert Strey, Oscarlina Weber-Santos, Claas Nendel, Michael Klingler, Charlotte Schumann, Korbinian Hartberger, Georg Guggenberger

Abstract

Soil carbon stocks of 29 plots along a transect through tropical Brazil showed only minor soil carbon losses after land use shift, although replacement of forest-derived carbon was detectable in subsoil and topsoil, indicating that new equilibria in soil carbon stocks might not have been reached after deforestation. The proportion of carbon lost from soils was negligible as compared to the emissions from biomass reduction by deforestation itself. Industrial agriculture had the best ratio between food production and carbon loss, pointing toward a potential reduction of deforestation pressure by further agricultural intensification, which is not achieved in practice due to institutional obstacles and uneven benefit sharing. In contrast, farmers at the agricultural frontier were identified as change agents if alternative sustainable land uses, taking advantage of biodiversity-related ecosystem services, are fostered by better access to credit lines and extension management. Thus, constraining the climate change debate in agriculture to sole management of carbon stock changes in soil is misleading and draws the attention from the most urgent problems: deforestation caused by wrong incentives.

Organisationseinheit(en)

Institut für Bodenkunde

Externe Organisation(en)

Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin)
Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso
Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung (ZALF) e.V.
Universität Innsbruck

Typ

Artikel

Journal

Regional environmental change

Band

18

Seiten

63-75

Anzahl der Seiten

13

ISSN

1436-3798

Publikationsdatum

01.2018

Publikationsstatus

Veröffentlicht

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Globaler Wandel

Ziele für nachhaltige Entwicklung

SDG 2 – Kein Hunger, SDG 13 – Klimaschutzmaßnahmen, SDG 15 – Lebensraum Land

Elektronische Version(en)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-016-1008-1 (Zugang: Geschlossen)