|
Written by Antonios Apostolakis, Axel Gualdoni-Becerra and Carolina Genoni When forested land is converted to agricultural land, it is not only the landscape that changes but also the ecosystem services that it provides. In a new research project spanning Argentina's Dry Chaco region, PhD student Axel Gualdoni-Becerra investigates how the transition from native forest to agricultural land fundamentally reshapes ecosystem structural, compositional and functional properties. In collaboration with Dr. Antonios Apostolakis, they plan to expand the project to include soil! Along a 400-kilometer precipitation gradient, they want to study and understand how forest soil organic carbon pools respond to one of the most pressing environmental challenges of our time: large-scale deforestation and land use intensification.
Soils are the largest carbon reservoir on land. The organic carbon stored in soils ultimately originates from atmospheric carbon dioxide fixed by plants through photosynthesis and transferred belowground as dead roots, litter, and other organic residues. In relatively undisturbed forests and other natural ecosystems, soil organic carbon tends to pendle around a dynamic steady state where carbon inputs from plant production and carbon losses through decomposition are roughly balanced, allowing large stocks to build up and persist over decades to centuries. However, when land use change or management intensification shift a system from its native state to a new one, for example when a forest is converted into a cropland, this balance is disrupted: carbon inputs typically decrease and carbon losses often increase, driving soils toward a new steady state with much lower carbon stocks. Therefore, soils turn from a long-term carbon sink into a source. In this project in Argentina's Dry Chaco, the largest dry forest in the world, the focus is on how this transition from natural forest to cropland, including the narrow forest strips left within agricultural landscapes, reshapes soil organic carbon storage and its stability along a broad rainfall gradient. Axel Gualdoni-Becerra also collaborates with Mixed Media artist Carolina Genoni, to create a documentary on the deforestation of Dry Chaco Forest and its consequence on the environment. The aim is to raise awareness about deforestation and bring science closer to the public. For this, Axel and Carolina visited the laboratory facilities of Division Agronomy on Friday, November 21st, and filmed the soil organic matter fractionation to operational pools. This attempt represents genuine collaboration bringing together expertise in ecology, soil science and art. Soil and plant samples are being currently processed and analysed hoping to shed light on how precipitation, forest structure, and land use collectively shape soil carbon in one of South America's most threatened ecosystems.
0 Comments
|
