Impact of climate change on soil organic carbon content on agricultural soils of Mexico

Abstract

Changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) content for Mexico’s agricultural land were estimated using the carbon accounting model of the IPCC guidelines (IPCC 2006) and the FAO soil organic matter decline model (Ortiz et al. 1994) for the short- and medium-term time horizons for a RCP of 8.5 W/m2 of radiative forcing with the HADGEM and GFDL models. All models show a significant decrease in the surface with higher content of organic matter while the soils with lower organic matter content increase considerably. The variation between the models is relatively low among them, associated to both establishing an increase in temperature and decrease in precipitation which are the fundamental factors that define the mineralization of the SOC in the methods used.