The Role of Soil in Carbon Sequestration: Implications for Climate Change Mitigation

Abstract

Soil, as the Earth's largest terrestrial carbon reservoir, plays a pivotal role in the global carbon cycle and presents a significant opportunity for mitigating climate change. This review explains current research on soil carbon sequestration, details how it works, what differences it makes and what it could mean for lowering global greenhouse emissions. Examples of land practises we cover are planting trees, farming food without ploughing and swapping pastures to enrich soil carbon. We investigate the impact of a changing climate on the carbon in soil. The study then points out the main obstacles to using soil to fight climate change and suggests combining environmental and economic strategies. As it is full of carbon, even more so than anywhere else, the soil helps manage changes in the Earth’s carbon and climate. Even though terrestrial ecosystems begin with their soil, plants within these ecosystems need photosynthesis to take in carbon dioxide from the air, convert it into what they need and put leftovers into the soil. Carbon is affected by a range of interactions between living and nonliving organisms in the soil. Soil organic matter is the top way soil maintains its carbon by taking in plant, animal and microscopic organism waste along with the products of their breakdown.  The movement of soil carbon depends on whether more carbon is being added from litter, roots or amendments or more of it is released by decomposition, breathing or erosion.