Carbon Protection - Aggregation

Hi everyone. In the last post I wrote about the need of the carbon protection. Today we will see how the carbon is protected inside the soil.

Frist of all, the soil ecosystem can be influenced by (Nikolaidis, 2011):

1. The climate change
2. Changes in land use
3. Fertilisation
4. Grazing

 The decomposition of the soil carbon is strongly positively affected by the above procedures. However, it has been shown that the decomposition rates reduced with the raise of the aggregate size, thus, the size of the aggregates plays a vital role in the decomposition (von Lützow et al., 2007).

Components of an aggregate

The aggregation of the particles provides structure to the soil and this has been associated with the soil fertility (Stamati et al., 2013). For example, agronomically valuable soil has more than 60% of the aggregates between 0.25 and 10 mm diameter (Banwart et al., 2011).

The aggregation plays a vital role in the decomposition of the organic carbon, protecting it from the oxygen and the microorganisms by sealing it inside the aggregates (Six et al., 2002).

Analytical aggregation strucure

 

It can be concluded, that the aggregates are the shield of the carbon in the fight of the decomposition helping the carbon sequestration in the soil and, undoubtedly, the stronger the shield, the better the results!