Subsoil management in agriculture and changes in organic matter stocks

Global environmental changes are threatening the productivity of agroecosystems. Floods or droughts, together with long-term decline in soil organic matter stocks are pointing to the necessity of finding solutions for sustainable performance of agroecosystems.

Deep soil horizons store significant amounts of water, soil organic carbon and nutrients, and thus subsoil management is being increasingly considered as an option to sustain crop productivity under unfavorable conditions.

We used samples from several field experiments in Germany designed to investigate the potential benefits of deep ploughing together with deep placement of organic fertilizers on soil organic matter stocks. We recorded hyperspectral images of 1-metre soil cores in the Vis-NIR range and modelled the C distribution at a very high spatial resolution (53×53 μm²). Using approaches for GIS analyses, we quantified the changes in C and N stocks and we will present their spatial distribution resulting from the incorporation of different types of organic fertilizer (compost vs green manure) in subsoils. The organic matter stocks and C:N stoichiometry are both impacted by the agricultural management and the imaging technique allows us to distinguish between increased amount of organic matter in hotspots or in soil mineral matrice and to discuss the mechanisms controlling the observed changes.