Influence of Sea Water Ingression on Carbon Sequestration in Soils Under Coastal Agro-ecosystems of Eastern India
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FULL-LENGTH RESEARCH ARTICLE
Influence of Sea Water Ingression on Carbon Sequestration in Soils Under Coastal Agro-ecosystems of Eastern India Shovik Deb1
•
Biswapati Mandal2 • P. B. S. Bhadoria3
Received: 15 July 2019 / Accepted: 27 January 2020 Ó NAAS (National Academy of Agricultural Sciences) 2020
Abstract Coastal agro-ecosystem covers a good part of Earth’s land cover, and the recent global warming-related sealevel rise may further extend its coverage. We assessed the ability of such agro-ecosystem for stocking organic C. To reveal the reasons thereof, soils were collected from three ecologies along east coast of India. It was observed that soils that experienced occasional visits by sea water were a better niche for organic C. Formation of bigger-sized soil aggregates that occlude organic C and protect it from microbial oxidation, migration of organic C towards relatively recalcitrant pools by attachment of its de-protonated –COO groups onto soil mineral surfaces, besides subdued microbial activity due to salinity, contributed longer persistence to organic C and thus its enrichment in coastal soils. Results suggested that occasional visits of salt-laden sea water to coastal agro-ecosystem might curb C loss from soils and thus CO2 loading in the atmosphere and hence the phenomenon of global warming. Keywords Soil salinity SOC enrichment Physical occlusion Chemical recalcitrance
Introduction The coastal agro-ecosystem, a foundation of food security for almost one-fifth of humankind, is occasionally visited by salt-laden sea- and river-water [32] either through surface inundation or sub-surface seepage or both. The frequency and intensity of such visit is increasing in the fluvio-marine coastal margins [13, 17] and apprehended to
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s40003-020-00456-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. & Shovik Deb [email protected] 1
Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Pundibari, Cooch Behar 736 165, India
2
Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Kalyani 741 235, India
3
Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721 302, India
be increased further because of current prediction of global warming leading to sea-level rise [25, 36]. This may result in increased salinity of the soils of the coastal agroecosystem also. Limited studies so far done have made general observations that saline surface soils of coastal ecosystem contained higher amount of organic C than a less-saline or non-saline counterpart [24, 27]. In spite of the fact that salinity affected soil health of coastal agroecosystem, this enhanced C sequestration may be a boon in disguise for curbing CO2 loading in atmosphere and thereby retarding global warming. The reason behind such observation has never been advanced excepting that the high salinity reduces microbial oxidative activity [33] and thereby the loss of C
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