Soil Carbon Stocks and Greenhouse Gas Mitigation of Agriculture in the Brazilian Cerrado-A Review.

New agricultural practices and land-use intensification in the Cerrado biome have affected the soil carbon stocks. A major part of the native vegetation of the Brazilian Cerrado, a tropical savanna-like ecoregion, has been replaced by crops, which has caused changes in the soil carbon (C) stocks. To ensure the sustainability of this intensified agricultural production, actions have been taken to increase soil C stocks and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. In the last two decades, new agricultural practices have been adopted in the Cerrado region, and their impact on C stocks needs to be better understood. This subject has been addressed in a systematic review of the existing data in the literature, consisting of 63 articles from the Scopus database. Our review showed that the replacement of Cerrado vegetation by crop species decreased the original soil C stocks (depth 0-30 cm) by 73%, with a peak loss of 61.14 Mg ha-1. However, when analyzing the 0-100 cm layer, 52.4% of the C stock data were higher under cultivated areas than in native Cerrado soils, with a peak gain of 93.6 Mg ha-1. The agricultural practices implemented in the Brazilian Cerrado make low-carbon agriculture in this biome possible.

Enzyme activities in a sandy soil of Western Bahia under cotton production systems: short-term effects, temporal variability, and the FERTBIO sample concept.

Enzyme activities (EAs) and the FERTBIO sample concept have been increasingly adopted as a novel approach to estimate the soil quality in Brazil. However, the performance of this strategy in sandy soils of the Cerrado biome remains unclear. During 2 years, in a Cerrado's sandy soil, the short-term effects of ten different cropping systems (conventional tillage or no-tillage associated with monoculture, rotations, and/or successions) on the activities of ß-glucosidase, acid phosphatase, and arylsulfatase were studied. Issues related to annual variability and the feasibility of using the FERTBIO sample concept for soil enzymes activities were also evaluated. Soil samples were collected at three different depths (0-10 cm, 10-20 cm, and 20-40 cm) in March 2017 and February 2018. Five years since the beginning of the experiment, the presence of cover crops and no-till promoted improvements in EAs evidencing the importance of regenerative management practices for the sustainability of agroecosystems in sandy soils. Regardless of the cropping systems and depths evaluated, soil organic carbon and EAs showed low temporal variation during the 2 years of monitoring. Our results also showed that it is possible to use the FERTBIO sample concept for the Quartzipsament soils of Western Bahia, Brazil.

Relationships between soil organic matter pools and nitrous oxide emissions of agroecosystems in the Brazilian Cerrado.

In the Brazilian Cerrado, despite the increasing adoption of no-till systems, there are still extended areas under conventional soil management systems that reduce soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) stocks and increase the emissions of greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide (N2O). Conservation agroecosystems, such as no-till, have been proposed as a strategy to mitigate agriculture-induced climatic changes through reductions in N2O emissions. However, the relationship between organic matter and N2O emissions from soils under different agroecosystems is not yet clear. This study hypothesized that agroecosystems under no-till promote an accumulation of labile and stable SOM fractions along with a reduction of N2O emissions. This study evaluated the effects of crop-rotation agroecosystems: i) on C and N pools and labile and stable SOM fractions; ii) on cumulative N2O emissions; and iii) on the relationships between SOM fractions and N2O emissions. The agricultural systems consisted of: (I) soybean followed by sorghum under no-tillage (NT1); (II) maize followed by pigeon pea under no-tillage (NT2); (III) soybean under conventional tillage followed by fallow soil (CT); (IV) and native Cerrado (CER). After CT for 18years, following the replacement of CER, the soil C stock in the 0-20cm layer was reduced by 0.64tha-1year-1. The no-till systems were more efficient in accumulating labile and stable C fractions with values close to those observed under CER, and were directly related to lower soil N2O emissions. The cumulative pattern of N2O emissions was inverse to that of the following SOM fractions: microbial biomass carbon, permanganate-oxidizable carbon, particulate organic carbon, inert carbon, and humic substances. Based on principal component analysis, the CT was generally separated from the other land use systems. This separation was strongly influenced by the low C contents in the different SOM fractions and higher N2O emissions promoted by the CT.