Proper Soil Management May Help Mitigate Global Warming: Study

Japan's National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences (NIAES) announced on November 14, 2007, after examining research on changes in soil carbon content at 20,000 farmland sites in Japan, that it found increasing the soil carbon sequestration through proper farmland management would likely contribute to the mitigation of global warming.

The institute analyzed data from research conducted by public agricultural research organizations nationwide from 1979 to 1998, in response to a request from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. After the observational study of change in the decomposition of carbon content in surface soil, its findings suggest that soil management practices, such as plowing under crop residue, input of organic matter such as compost and manure, and decreasing the number of times that fields are plowed, would positively affect the level of soil carbon.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment of Working Group 3 (WG3), issued in May 2007, also indicated that these practices would contribute to the mitigation of global warming by increasing the carbon sequestration in agricultural soil, and that proper soil management is crucial.

http://www.niaes.affrc.go.jp/index_e.html

Posted: 2008/04/05 09:44:49 AM