Soil Organic Carbon Stock

Land use change from natural forest to agricultural land and plantation result in lowering of SOC through intensive soil disturbance of soil structure and oxidation of soil organic matter. For example, besides to surface soil degradation in the form of deforestation and erosion, conversion of forest to crop land invariably results in a loss of 20 to 50% of soil carbon and 59% carbon losses through the conversion of pasture to cropland (Muktar et al., 2018).
But, the conversion of forest to pasture did not show significant loss of soil carbon and in another way, when cropland is converted into natural vegetation, SOC will accumulate (Muktar et al., 2018). Many studies have shown that, carbon stored in cultivated soil has declined drastically because agricultural practices typically deplete soil Carbon by removing major fractions of photo synthetically fixed C as harvest, and therefore returning only a small amount of plant litter to the soil.
However, appropriate land management can contribute significantly to soil Carbon sequestration by manipulating the conditions to generate greater biological inputs of C than losses, because soil C stocks are mainly determined by C inputs and the decomposition rate. As a result, both crop yield and soil C sequestration are generally influenced by tillage, fertilizer practices, residue management, irrigation and pesticide use. Another researcher in Bilaspur District of Achanakmar researcher was set up to estimate and compare the SOC pools under different land uses viz. the highest SOC stock was found in upper 0-20 cm soil depth, followed by 20-50 cm soil depth and least in 50-100 cm among all land uses.

The findings of the analysis are share of SOC pool exhibited under different land use systems found in Achanakmar were: forestland (81%), agricultural land (17%), grassland (1%) and wasteland (1%) and the soil organic carbon stocks at three different depths under forest land use was much higher as compared to the other land uses, this is because of the highest litter fall and plant residues associated with microbial activities was observed in the forests which shows the interlink age of forest ecosystems in storage or sequestration of SOC