Nachhaltiges Landmanagement: SP 3 - Carbon sequestration in steppe soils

SP 3 - Carbon sequestration in steppe soils

The overarching goals of this subproject are:

to lay the scientific basis for sustainable and carbon-optimized land management in the largest conversion areas in the world, located in the south Siberian/Kazakh steppes
to investigate how these vulnerable agricultural ecosystems can be best adapted to climate change.

Individual objectives are:
to evaluate the organic carbon (OC) storage in soils under different land use and soil management and to estimate C sequestration under optimized land use and abandoned arable fields as compared to conventional tillage.
to quantify the C turnover of the OC by combining a stable C isotope pulse-labeling experiment and 14C approaches.
to assess the consequences of climate change on the sustainability of the C sequestration in soil carrying out the above studies along climatic gradient in the Kulunda steppe.
to provide the scientific basis for the establishment of a decision making tool (model) for carbon-friendly and sustainable soil management.