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Potential of grassland rehabilitation through high density-short duration grazing to sequester atmospheric carbon

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Title Potential of grassland rehabilitation through high density-short duration grazing to sequester atmospheric carbon
 
Creator Chaplot, Vincent
 
Contributor Dlamini, Phesheya
Chivenge, Pauline
 
Subject grassland
sequestration
 
Description According to the World Resources Institute (2000), a relative increase of carbon (C) stocks in world soils by 0.4% per year would be
sufficient to compensate all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Several land management practices such as the suppression of
tillage in agroecosystems and livestock exclusion in grasslands had initially been thought to store more carbon into the soil, but recent
research puts this into question. In a context where finding effective C sequestration methods is urgent, the main objective of this study
was to assess the ability of an innovative grassland management practice based on high density and short duration (HDSD) grazing to
sequester atmospheric C into soils. The study was performed in a degraded communal rangeland in South Africa where soil organic C
(SOC) depletion ranged from 5 to 95% depending on the degradation level, which varied from nondegraded
(ND; with grass above
ground coverage, Cov of 100%), degraded (D1; 50 < Cov < 75%), D2 (25 < Cov < 50%) and HD (highly degraded: Cov < 5%). The
ability of HDSD (1200 cows ha− 1 for 3 days a year) to replenish SOC stocks was compared to four commonly used strategies: (1)
livestock exclosure (E); (2) livestock exclosure with topsoil tillage (ET); (3) livestock exclosure with NPK fertilization (2:3:3, 22 at 0.2 t
ha− 1) (EF); (4) annual burning (AB); all treatments being compared to traditional free grazing control. A total of 540 soil samples were
collected in the 0–0.05 m soil layer for all treatments and degradation intensities. After two years, topsoil SOC stocks were significantly
increased under EF and HDSD, by an average of 33.4 ± 0.5 and 12.4 ± 2.1 g C m2 y− 1, respectively. In contrast, AB reduced SOC
stocks by 3.6 ± 3.0 g C m2 y− 1, while the impact of E and ET was not significant at P < 0.05. HDSD replenished SOC stocks the
most at D1 and D2 (6.7 and 7.4% y− 1) and this was explained by grass recovery, i.e. a significant increase in soil surface coverage by
grass and grass production. HDSD is costeffective,
and thus has great potential to be widely adopted by smallholder farmers.
 
Date 2016-02-19
2017-02-08T22:55:06Z
2017-02-08T22:55:06Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/id/eprint/9842
https://mel.cgiar.org/reporting/download/hash/TyNl9or5
Vincent Chaplot, Phesheya Dlamini, Pauline Chivenge. (19/2/2016). Potential of grassland rehabilitation through high density-short duration grazing to sequester atmospheric carbon. Geoderma, 271, pp. 10-17.
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11766/5587
Limited access
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-NC-4.0
 
Format PDF
 
Publisher Elsevier
 
Source Geoderma;271,(2016) Pagination 10,17