Mitigating climate change through sustainable land management: insights from soil carbon stock analysis in Brazil

Land use and land cover (LULC), as well as the biome in which they are located, influence soil carbon stocks. Tropical soils hold a significant portion of the world’s carbon stocks, a result of high temperatures, precipitation, and management practices that drive temporal variability in soil respiration. Based on this context, the hypothesis of this study is that land use and land cover influence soil carbon stocks. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate soil carbon stocks under different LULCs in the Cerrado, Pantanal, and Atlantic Forest biomes, located in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. The following land uses and covers were assessed in each biome: agriculture (represented by soybean cultivation), well-managed pasture, eucalyptus plantation, and native vegetation. Carbon stocks were quantified by analyzing total soil carbon in the 0–10, 10–20, and 20–40 cm layers at 100 sampling points for each LULC and biome. Principal component analysis (PCA) was performed to identify interrelationships between carbon stocks at different depths across LULCs and biomes. A Pearson correlation network was also constructed to graphically represent correlations between LULCs × depths and biomes × depths for soil carbon stock contents. Our findings reveal variation in soil carbon stocks in relation to land use, land cover, and the corresponding biome. Cerrado biome exhibited the highest carbon stocks under eucalyptus, pasture, and agriculture at the 20–40 cm depth, while the lowest carbon stocks were observed in the Atlantic Forest biome under agricultural use at the 0–10 and 20–40 cm depths. Identifying the main LULCs that contribute to carbon sequestration in each biome is essential for establishing greenhouse gas mitigation targets, thereby contributing to the minimization of global climate change.