Maximizing Soil Carbon Sequestration: Assessing Procedural Barriers to Carbon Management in Cultivated Tropical Perennial Grass Systems

Abstract

The natural capacity of the terrestrial landscape to capture and store carbon from the atmosphere can be used in cultivated systems to maximize the climate change mitigation potential of agricultural regions. A combination of inherent soil carbon storage potential, conservation management, and rhizosphere inputs should be considered when making landscape-level decisions about agriculture if climate change mitigation is an important goal. However, the ability to accurately predict soil organic carbon accumulation following management change in the tropics is currently limited by the commonly available tools developed in more temperate systems, a gap that must be addressed locally in order to facilitate these types of landscape-level decisions. Here we use a case study in Hawaii to demonstrate multiple approaches to measuring and simulating soil carbon changes after the implementation of zero-tillage cultivation of perennial grasses following more than a century of intensive sugarcane cultivation. We identify advancements needed to overcome the barriers to potential monitoring and projection protocols for soil carbon storage at our site and others with similarities.