Improving, Restoring, and Conserving Soil Organic Matter in Grasslands
A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Grassland and Pasture Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 August 2021) | Viewed by 4764
Special Issue Editor
Interests: soil biogeochemistry; carbon sequestration; nutrient management; greenhouse gases; modelling; carbon footprint; environmental sustainability; climate change
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
The Paris Agreement prioritizes climate policy and research agendas to keep the temperature increase to well below 2°C. Compared to the atmosphere, soils as a storehouse of 2–3 times more organic carbon, which is the measurable constituent of soil organic matter (SOM), could play a pivotal role. Various biotic and abiotic factors, including organic materials as inputs and plant–soil feedbacks, are the major drivers of SOM build-up that maintains soil quality, productivity, and environmental resilience. Grasslands (e.g., pasture, silage, hay, integrated/mixed farming, and pastoralism) dominate major agricultural areas, contributing >30% to the soil organic carbon (SOC) pools to become a natural climate solution. Diverse agro-climatic regions with low-input pastoral to highly intensive production systems in optimizing management practices for carbon sequestration remain a big challenge. The impact of grassland type, biodiversity, erosion/degradation, and land use change on SOC pools is enormous, showing either sink or source, and may deteriorate further under climate change. This Special Issue seeks high-quality articles (original, review, case study, methodology, and modelling) to improve knowledge-base, identify research gaps, and understand region/biome-specific management practices/technologies to increase, restore, and conserve SOM/SOC in grassland systems while achieving productivity, socio-economic benefits, and environmental sustainability, and offsetting/trading-off greenhouse gases.
Dr. Mohammad Ibrahim Khalil
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agronomy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- carbon sequestration
- degradation
- recovery
- conservation
- management practices
- climate change
- trade-off/offset
- grassland systems
