FAO Forestry Paper 168 Soil carbon monitoring using surveys and modelling General description and application in the United Republic of Tanzania Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Rome 2012

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ISBN 978-92-5-107271-4

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Contents

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Foreword
Acknowledgements
Acronyms
Executive summary
(Download - 324 KB)

Introduction (Download - 44 KB)

Need for soil carbon estimates
Soil carbon cycle
Conflicts at the human–wildlife–livestock interface
Challenges in monitoring changes in soil carbon
Methods of monitoring changes in soil carbon
Objective of this report

Soil carbon monitoring based on repeated measurements (Download - 95 KB)

Designing a soil carbon survey
Improving the efficiency of the sampling effort
Information needed to design a repeated soil carbon inventory

Between-site variation in soil carbon stock and number of plots to be measured
Within-site variation and determination of number of subsamples per plot

Uncertainties in soil carbon surveys

Sources of uncertainty
Sampling errors
Measurement errors

Quality control and quality assurance in soil carbon inventories

Need for consistency control
Soil sampling
Laboratory analyses

Model-based soil carbon monitoring (Download - 86 KB)

Model-based soil carbon monitoring system
Practical application of a model-based soil carbon monitoring system

Evaluation of soil carbon monitoring methods  (Download - 46 KB)

Soil carbon monitoring in the United Republic of Tanzania (Download - 187 KB)

Soil organic carbon stock inventory in the United Republic of Tanzania

Background and rationale
NAFORMA sampling design
Sampling design in first soil survey
Soil sampling
Observations at a sample point
Compositing soil samples
Feasibility of the soil sampling design and its practical implementation

Measurements needed for designing a repeated soil carbon survey in the United Republic of Tanzania

Number of soil sampling plots to be measured
Within-site variation and determination of number of subsamples per plot

Model-based method

Overview of the task
Soil carbon model choice
Reliability of model-calculated soil carbon estimates
Spatial calculation units
Litter input and litter quality estimates
Climate data
Land-use change estimates
Initial soil carbon stock
Simulation of soil carbon changes

Local measurements to support the model application

Purpose of local measurements
Soil carbon pool
Litter decomposition and litter chemistry
Litter production

References (Download - 246 KB)