Soil Carbon: a Critical Natural Resource – Wide-scale Goals, Urgent Actions - Soil Carbon: Science, Management and Policy for Multiple Benefits - page 18

people can implement management. The
implications of the local management of
SOC and its interactions with environmen-
tal services can have broader significance.
Nowadays, given the degraded status of
SOC in most managed soils and the ongoing
threats to soils rich in carbon (e.g. peatlands,
tropical forests), there are clear and imme-
diate synergies between services in terms of
SOC management. For example, at the farm
level in low-carbon agricultural soils, there
could be far-reaching co-benefits such as in-
creased crop productivity, reduced runoff
for water protection, enhanced soil bio-
logical functions and carbon sequestration.
Therefore, increasing SOC could include
landscape-derived benefits from water qual-
ity and quantity improvements and benefits
from maintaining biodiversity by restoring
soils and habitats. At the global level, im-
proved farm- and catchment-level manage-
ment to increase or maintain SOC could
translate into a mitigation action for cli-
mate. However, none of the positive roles of
increasing SOC for environmental services
would be understood without scientific
research. Therefore, a synergy must exist
between academic institutions, research pro-
grammes and local communities to create
public awareness and to communicate rele-
vant findings quickly.

of natural systems to food or biofuel pro-
duction systems (Leifeld et al ., 2011; Powl-
son et al ., 2011). The losses of SOC have
adversely impacted crop productivity and
other ecosystem services such as water re-
sources, biodiversity, bioenergy and climate
regulation (Bai et al ., 2008). Much is known
about management practices that can restore
the organic matter contents of soils and can
reduce or stop carbon losses from terrestrial
ecosystems. In many regions and cropping
systems, relatively small changes in land
management practices can have relatively
large impacts on SOC and its derived bene-
fits. However, the adoption of these man-
agement practices has been very limited.
There is an urgent need for identifying and
overcoming the barriers to the adoption of
practices that enhance SOC through appropri-
ate policies, investment and land-use plan-
ning at various scales. Furthermore, tools are
needed to enhance the measurement and
analysis of the costs and benefits/valuation
of various practices and farming systems on
the range of ecosystem services at various
temporal and spatial scales, including the
economic, social and environmental bene-
fits of increasing SOC.
Given that most soils and services can
benefit from reversing their depleted state of
SOC, we suggest that in the coming few dec-
ades increases in SOC will concurrently im-
prove the five essential services ( Fig. 2.1 ).
However, the potential of soils to increase
SOC is dependent on time and is con-
strained by different factors ( Fig. 2.4 ). It is
known that under given climatic, substrate,
relief and hydrologic conditions there will

Uncertainties and Challenges

Across the world, there is evidence that man-
aged soils have decreased their SOC due to
changes in land use such as the conversion

Soil carbon storage potential

Biophysical,
e.g. climate,
soil type

Management,
e.g. land-use
tradition

Economic,
e.g.
pressures
and drivers

Political,
e.g. failing
incentives

Months

Years

Decades

Centuries

Fig. 2.4. Main constraints to soil carbon accumulation and the time frames over which they may be addressed.