Sequestering carbon in the subsoil benefits crop transpiration at the onset of drought

Turek, Maria Eliza; Nemes, Attila; Holzkämper, Annelie

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-9-545-2023

Articles | Volume 9, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-9-545-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-9-545-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 9, issue 2

Original research article

|

09 Nov 2023

Original research article |

| 09 Nov 2023

Sequestering carbon in the subsoil benefits crop transpiration at the onset of drought

Maria Eliza Turek, Attila Nemes, and Annelie Holzkämper

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/soil-9-545-2023-supplement

Data sets

Supporting data to Turek et al. 2023 M. E. Turek and A. Holzkämper https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10068907

Short summary

In this study, we systematically evaluated prospective crop transpiration benefits of sequestering soil organic carbon (SOC) under current and future climatic conditions based on the model SWAP. We found that adding at least 2% SOC down to at least 65 cm depth could increase transpiration annually by almost 40 mm, which can play a role in mitigating drought impacts in rain-fed cropping. Beyond this threshold, additional crop transpiration benefits of sequestering SOC are only marginal.