Description:

Please join us as MS student Lucas Chamberlain presents his thesis research to the PBC community!

Quantifying soil carbon sequestration following the conversion of an abandoned field to sustainable agriculture. 

Soil organic carbon (SOC) is an essential component of agroecosystem health and key to reducing land degradation. In this study, our objective was to quantify SOC levels in perennial and annual crop systems in a recently established agroecosystem. We found that SOC accrual did not differ significantly among treatments. However, soil respiration, or carbon loss, was shown to be significantly higher within annual systems than perennials. Additionally, we found that levels of root colonization by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and saprophytic fungi differed significantly among crops. Because AMF are key to SOC accrual and saprophytes to C cycling, these results suggest that crop treatment may affect abundance of beneficial soil organisms and thus, may have broader implications for soil C management in agroecosystems.