Climate drives global soil carbon sequestration and crop yield changes under conservation agriculture

Wenjuan Sun; Josep G. Canadell; Lijun Yu; Lingfei Yu; Wen Zhang; Pete Smith; Tony Fischer; Yao Huang

doi:10.1111/gcb.15001

Climate drives global soil carbon sequestration and crop yield changes under conservation agriculture

Wenjuan Sun, Josep G. Canadell, Lijun Yu, Lingfei Yu, Wen Zhang, Pete Smith, Tony Fischer, Yao Huang^* (Corresponding Author)

^*Corresponding author for this work

Aberdeen Centre For Environmental Sustainability

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Abstract

Conservation agriculture has been shown to have multiple benefits for soils, crop yield and the environment, and consequently, no-till, the central practice of conservation agriculture, has rapidly expanded. However, studies show that the potential for carbon (C) sequestration in no-till farming sometimes is not realized, let alone the ability to maintain or improve crop yield. Here we present a global analysis of no-till induced changes of soil C and crop yield based on 260 and 1,970 paired studies, respectively. We show that, relative to local conventional tillage, arid regions can benefit the most from conservation agriculture by achieving a win-win outcome of enhanced C sequestration and increased crop yield. However, more humid regions are more likely to increase SOC only, while some colder regions have yield losses with soil C loss as likely as soil C gains. In addition to site-specific characteristics and management, a careful assessment of the regional climate is needed to determine the potential benefits of adopting conservation agriculture.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	3325-3335
Number of pages	11
Journal	Global Change Biology
Volume	26
Issue number	6
Early online date	8 Feb 2020
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15001
Publication status	Published - 1 Jun 2020

Keywords

climate
conservation agriculture
crop yield
meta-analysis
soil organic carbon
win-win outcome
MATTER
METAANALYSIS
ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
BULK-DENSITY
VARIABILITY
ORGANIC-CARBON
FERTILIZER
NO-TILL
IMPACTS
STRATIFICATION

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1111/gcb.15001Licence: Unspecified

Sun_et_al_GCB_ClimateDrives_AAM
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Sun, W, Canadell, JG, Yu, L, et al. Climate drives global soil carbon sequestration and crop yield changes under conservation agriculture. Glob Change Biol. 2020; 26: 3325– 3335., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15001. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.
Accepted author manuscript, 1.58 MBLicence: Unspecified

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Climate drives global soil carbon sequestration and crop yield changes under conservation agriculture. / Sun, Wenjuan; Canadell, Josep G.; Yu, Lijun; Yu, Lingfei; Zhang, Wen; Smith, Pete; Fischer, Tony; Huang, Yao (Corresponding Author).

In: Global Change Biology, Vol. 26, No. 6, 01.06.2020, p. 3325-3335.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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abstract = "Conservation agriculture has been shown to have multiple benefits for soils, crop yield and the environment, and consequently, no-till, the central practice of conservation agriculture, has rapidly expanded. However, studies show that the potential for carbon (C) sequestration in no-till farming sometimes is not realized, let alone the ability to maintain or improve crop yield. Here we present a global analysis of no-till induced changes of soil C and crop yield based on 260 and 1,970 paired studies, respectively. We show that, relative to local conventional tillage, arid regions can benefit the most from conservation agriculture by achieving a win-win outcome of enhanced C sequestration and increased crop yield. However, more humid regions are more likely to increase SOC only, while some colder regions have yield losses with soil C loss as likely as soil C gains. In addition to site-specific characteristics and management, a careful assessment of the regional climate is needed to determine the potential benefits of adopting conservation agriculture.",

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author = "Wenjuan Sun and Canadell, {Josep G.} and Lijun Yu and Lingfei Yu and Wen Zhang and Pete Smith and Tony Fischer and Yao Huang",

note = "This research was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (grant Nos. 41530533 and 41573069) and the National Key R&D Program of China (grant No. 2017YFE0104600). We thank Prof. Xuhui Lee in Yale University, Dr. Zhongkui Luo in Zhejiang University, Prof. Ben Smith in Lund University and Dr. Xunyu Hu in East China Inventory and Planning Institute, State Forestry and Grassland Administration for their helpful comments that led to the improvement of this paper.",

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Climate drives global soil carbon sequestration and crop yield changes under conservation agriculture

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

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