Sustainable Management of Agricultural Soils: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emission and Enhancing Natural Fertility

农业土壤的可持续管理：减少温室气体排放并提高自然肥力

• 批准号: 2319366
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Birmingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2319366
• 关键词: Sustainable; Management; Agricultural; Soils; Reducing

Soil is fundamental to life and is vulnerable to losses in stored carbon (C) and productivity, particularly under intensive agriculture.1 For example, 133 billion tons of soil C has been lost due to agriculture, which alone represents between 10-20% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emission into air.1 Among others, loss in soil C reduces fertility and thus to sustain productivity, application of synthetic fertilizers including nitrogen (N) has intensified. The use of fertilizers has led to increases in production;2 however, at the same time excessive fertilization has been linked to deterioration of environmental quality, and emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) particularly nitrous oxide, which is 300 times more potent in inducing global warming than CO23, 4, 5. Thus there is an urgent need for the identification of soil management practices that can help sustain soil fertility and productivity whilst reducing GHG emissions.6 Arable agriculture in the UK like the global seriously suffers from the soil exhaustion challenge, and there is a current impetus on improving soil health to ensure food security.One way is to introduce rotations in agriculture such that leys (as soil's resting phase in between cultivation) can be optimized for enhancing fertility whilst sustaining income. A new multi-institutional project in the UK on 'Restoring Soil Health through Integration of Leys and Sheep Grazing in Arable Rotations' is now establishing farm-scale experimental fields (2019-2022) to evaluate the broader agro-environmental effectiveness of rotations with grass and herb rich leys with and without grazing and tillage, respectively (Fig1). It is hypothesized that herbaceous leys with N fixing plants will enhance soil fertility that will reduce reliance on fertilizers in subsequent cultivations and to this effect the project is focused on measuring soil nutrients and productivity. Since the planned rotations will affect the emission of GHG through its impact on soil N and C transformation processes, which is not included in the consortium project, therefore, the proposed PhD research will evaluate the impacts of traditional (grass-clover) and herbal leys rotations on biological N fixation, N mineralization and greenhouse gas emission rates to identify efficient soil management strategies for incorporation into agricultural practices.

土壤是生命的基础，易受储存碳（C）和生产力损失的影响，特别是在集约化农业下。1例如，由于农业，1330亿吨土壤C已经损失，仅这一点就占人类排放到空气中的二氧化碳总量的10-20%。包括氮（N）的合成肥料的施用已经加强。化肥的使用导致产量增加;2然而，与此同时，过度施肥与环境质量恶化和温室气体（GHG）的排放有关，特别是一氧化二氮，其引起全球变暖的能力是二氧化碳的300倍23，4，5。因此，迫切需要确定有助于维持土壤肥力和生产力，同时减少温室气体排放的土壤管理方法。6英国的耕地农业与全球一样，严重遭受土壤枯竭的挑战，目前有一种改善土壤健康以确保粮食安全的动力。一种方法是在农业中引入轮作，（作为土壤在耕作之间的休息阶段）可以优化，以提高肥力，同时维持收入。英国一个新的多机构项目“通过整合耕地轮作中的草地和绵羊放牧恢复土壤健康”目前正在建立农场规模的实验田（2019-2022年），以评估草地和草本植物丰富的草地在放牧和耕作的情况下的更广泛的农业环境有效性（图1）。据推测，具有固氮植物的草本牧草将提高土壤肥力，从而减少后续栽培对肥料的依赖，为此，该项目侧重于测量土壤养分和生产力。由于计划的轮换将通过其对土壤氮和碳转化过程的影响来影响温室气体的排放，这不包括在财团项目中，因此，拟议的博士研究将评估传统（草三叶草）和草药leys轮换对生物固氮，氮矿化和温室气体排放率的影响，以确定有效的土壤管理策略纳入农业实践。