{"id":34924,"date":"2025-04-16T19:47:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T17:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/?p=34924"},"modified":"2025-04-16T19:53:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T17:53:49","slug":"a-significant-portion-of-european-agricultural-land-is-at-risk-of-losing-soil-organic-carbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.co2news.sk\/en\/2025\/04\/16\/a-significant-portion-of-european-agricultural-land-is-at-risk-of-losing-soil-organic-carbon\/","title":{"rendered":"A significant portion of European farmland at risk of soil organic carbon loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

Document<\/span><\/a> deals with the concept of soil organic carbon saturation (SOC)<\/strong> and proposes a new SOC risk index<\/strong> for European agricultural soils. The introduction highlights the importance of soil as carbon sink in the context of achieving climate neutrality in the European Union (EU) by 2050. It is pointed out that agricultural soils in the EU are SOC depleted compared to other land uses and most of them are far from being saturated with a stable fraction of mineral-bound organic carbon (MAOC), which allows for additional carbon storage through appropriate management practices. Nevertheless, the study found a relative SOC loss of 0.75 % in European agricultural soils over the period 2009\u20132018.<\/p>\n

The paper explains that assessing the total SOC content and its changes over time alone does not provide sufficient information for effective interventions aimed at SOC sequestration. Therefore, in recent decades, a new conceptual framework has developed that highlights the benefits of dividing the total SOC into two fractions: MAOC and particulate organic carbon (POC)<\/strong>. MAOC consists mainly of low molecular weight plant and microbial compounds that can be stabilized by interaction with the soil matrix through sorption and physical protection. This makes MAOC more resistant to degradation than POC and has a longer turnover time, which supports the long-term storage of atmospheric CO2 in the soil. However, MAOC has a theoretical mineral capacity due to the limited number of binding sites on the mineral surface [3, 12\u201314]. The degree of saturation of MAOC therefore indicates the proportion of measured MAOC relative to this theoretical capacity.<\/p>\n

The study argues that the commonly used method of calculating the theoretical mineral capacity MAOC based on soil texture and clay mineralogy has little practical relevance for carbon enhancement measures. For example, Mediterranean soils would never reach the MAOC content of acidic soils in the cold climates of northern Europe, even if they had the same texture. Therefore, the authors propose a calculation "MAOC effective capacity"<\/strong> based on a cluster analysis that takes into account pedo-climatic and economic conditions. The effective MAOC capacity thus represents the biophysically achievable MAOC in a given pedo-climatic cluster for agricultural soils.<\/p>\n

Information from four datasets was used to map the risk index: i) SOC content at repeatedly monitored sites (2009\u20132018) within the EU Land Use and Land Cover Survey (LUCAS), ii) SOC changes (\u0394SOC) between repeated surveys, iii) associated visible and near-infrared (VNIR) spectroscopy measurements and iv) a subset of measured SOC fractions. The risk index is based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) exposure-vulnerability-hazard concept.<\/p>\n