The land use sector has the potential not only to lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but also to sequester CO2 in soils through land use change and management practices. This represents an important mitigation opportunity, but there is a lack of knowledge in the potential of carbon sequestration between different land use types. This study examines soil organic carbon content and soil organic matter in a nature reserve in eastern middle Sweden. Methods include a change analysis of land use, values for soil organic carbon content from a literature review and soil samples for concentrations of soil organic matter. The study area has in terms of soil carbon been a source of atmospheric CO2 between 1945 and 1997, mainly due to a change from semi-natural grasslands to coniferous forest, resulting in a loss of 2209 tonnes of soil organic carbon. Results also show that wet grasslands and deciduous forests are the land use types with the highest potential to sequester carbon in shorter time spans. Older coniferous forests can store large amount of soil organic carbon, but younger coniferous forests and plantations, and cultivated lands were the land use types with the lowest values of soil organic carbon. Semi-natural grasslands have potential to store soil organic carbon but rates varied between samples and literature.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-157449 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Gullberg, Rebecka |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för naturgeografi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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