Modeling Soil Organic Matter Under Different Brazilian Biomes
Susceptible to Land Use Changes Using Daycent
Abstract
The conservation of natural ecosystems is an essential component for
sustainable land use (LU). One of the challenges facing society
worldwide is climate change, where reduce emissions, and sequestrate
greenhouse gases from the atmosphere are fundamental to mitigate its
effects. LU change plays a major role in the carbon (C) cycle, and
understanding and quantifying its effects is one of the main challenges
for effectively implementing climate change mitigation actions. Given
this scenario, our objective was to calibrate the Daycent model to
estimate the references equilibrium soil organic matter (SOM) for three
important Brazilian biomes: Atlantic Forest (AF), Cerrado (CE), and
Pampa (PA). Together, they represent 39% of native vegetation area, and
over them are concentrated the majority of the agricultural production
in Brazil. Estimating the equilibrium for major soil types in the three
biomes is fundamental for evaluating C dynamics and the soil C loss
regarding LU changes. Data from literature, including SOM, were
collected for the three biomes: PA (29°30’S, 54°15’W; soil with sandy
loam texture), CE (19°28’S, 44°15’W; very clayey texture) and AF
(10°92’S, 37°19’W; sandy texture). Daycent parameters to represent the
biomes biophysical properties were initially set up with values from
local literature. Measured SOM was then employed during the calibration
of the Daycent model. We ran the model for 6,000 years for the
equilibrium simulations, obtaining the stabilization of the SOM
compartments (active, slow, and passive). For the biomes’ biophysical
properties the parameters for maximum potential production (PRDX) were
adjusted for each biome, PA with 0.92 g C m-2 , AF with 1.5 g C m-2 and
CE with 0.9 g C m-2 (default = 0.5 g C m-2). The relative error between
measured and predicted total SOM was lower than 2% for all biomes, thus
representing the equilibrium properly for the study conditions. The
largest C compartment of the biomes (slow organic matter in the soil)
had 71.7% for AF, 68.5% for PA, and 63.7% for CE of the total SOM.
The highest SOM values were found in the CE, with 53 Mg C ha-1, followed
by the PA with 37 Mg C ha-1, and in the AF with 35 Mg C ha-1. Eventual
LU changes will impact the SOM equilibrium of these native vegetation,
but sustainable practices must take place to avoid C losses as far as
possible.