Soil carbon balance following conversion of grassland to oil palm
Conference Contribution ResearchOnline@JCUAbstract
[Extract] Oil palm is an important crop of the humid tropics, with a planted area of 12 million ha, growing at around 400,000 ha per year. Information of the carbon footprint of palm oil production is needed because oil palm often replaces tropical forests containing large stocks of carbon, and because palm oil is increasingly used to produce biofuels. Because of this interest a number of greenhouse gas budgets of oil palm operations have been produced (Syahrinudin 2005; Germer et al. 2008; Gibbs et al. 2008; Reijnders et al. 2008; Wicke et al. 2008; Chase and Henson 2010) but information about soil organic carbon (SOC) changes is important to strengthen these budgets. There is limited information of the changes to SOC stocks under oil palm. No studies have calculated SOC losses over the life of a plantation including the initial land use change and no studies have measured changes in SOC upon conversion of grassland to oil palm. Oil palm plantings on grasslands provide an opportunity to use stable carbon isotope analysis to investigate changes to SOC. The aims of this study were to : 1)Measure SOC stocks in several oil palm plantations in Popondetta, Papua New Guinea (PNG). 2)Determine the rate of accumulation of SOC from oil palm inputs and the rate of disappearance of the existing SOC stock (including during the initial conversion from original vegetation). 3)Identify whether soil in oil palm plantations established on tropical grasslands in PNG is a source or sink of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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Joint ASSI and NZSSS Soil Science Conference: Soil solutions for diverse landscapes
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Hobart, Australia
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Joint ASSI and NZSSS Soil Science Conference
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