Changes in the relationships between soil organic carbon and water holding capacity under different land uses

One of the major challenges of the 21 st century is the mediation of climate change through the sustainable management of natural resources. Soil organic matter (SOM) together with water holding capacity (WHC) is known to play a key role in productivity changes of land use. The envisioned project is aimed to better understand the relationship between WHC and SOM in dependency on different land use. The planned approach is based on traditional knowledge and methods describing the dependency of WHC on soil texture and soil management, with an evaluation of new opportunities to assess the SOM status via simple thermogravimetric analyses. This will help to: a) Quantify the interdependency of WHC from texture, SOC and other impact factors more accurately, b) Make a prediction of WHC for practical soil use possible, and c) May improve SOM assessment or help to validate the informative value of current SOM assessment via relationship to WHC. The study will focus on secondary data evaluation of samples from different fertilization plots of long-term field experiments, long-term monitoring areas, soils under forestry, horticulture use and of another origin. Since a large portion (approximately 90%) of SOC occurs in aggregates, an investigation of

FIS:VIVO