Tillage and cropping effects on the fate of crop derived-c and n and turnover of soil organic matter

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Two-thirds of the terrestrial C is stored as soil organic matter (SOM) in agricultural, forest and grassland soils, therefore it is a primary storehouse of global C and changes in the dynamics of SOM can influence global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). SOM is also critical for plant and animal life because of it modifies soil physical, chemical and biological properties, including nutrient and water retention, erosion resistance, and soil fertility. Despite this central role, the nature and dynamics of SOM as affected by land-use change or global warming are poorly understood - it is considered to be the most complex mixture on earth. Agricultural ecosystems account for 11% of the land area and management practices directly affect SOM formation and turnover. Recently these soils have become a major research focus because of the potential for SOM to mitigate climate change: the soils have lost 30-50% of their original SOM but could be managed to be a major global reservoir for atmospheric CO2 where plant C is sequestered as SOM that is hundreds to thousands of years old. My research program studies how farming practices and soil properties affect SOM constituents and is critical for devising strategies for sequestering C. The proposed research will be conducted on soil and crop samples collected at a long-term field site located at Delhi, ON. These field plots were established in 1988 on a site in tobacco-fall rye rotation since 1933. The soils are loamy sand, allowing study of SOM constituents free of the confounding affects of clay. It includes three cropping systems (continuous corn, a soybean-wheat rotation and a tobacco-rye rotation), under two tillage regimes, CT using mouldboard plough-disc tillage and NT. The goal is to identify changes in the quantity and composition of SOM resulting from a shift in cropping sequence and tillage from the previous tobacco-rye CT rotation. Since measurable changes in SOM pools occur slowly, the fact that this site has been in place for ~20 yr is invaluable. It believed to be the only long-term site in the world containing 14C- and 15N-labelled crop residues and allowing measurements of delta 13C because of the switch from C3 (tobacco-rye) to C4 (corn) species.