Kohlenstoffspeicherung in Böden und Gehölzen in einem landwirtschaftlichen Betrieb

In the face of climate change, carbon farming has become the focus of societal debates. The potentials of agriculture need to be quantified to develop suitable management methods for increasing carbon sequestration. Various land use systems have been established on the 600-hectare property of the Thünen Institute of Organic Farming in Northern Germany. These are examined in more detail in the following work regarding carbon storage. The research question is: How much organic carbon (C_org) is stored on the areas of the farm? Carbon contents of woody plants and of soils from 0 to 30 cm were examined for the study year 2022. For this purpose, classical agricultural and forestry methods were combined with new remote sensing methods, depending on the land use system and available data. A total of 54,000 Mg C_org is sequestered in the study area, which corresponds to an average sequestered C_org amount of 92 Mg/ha. The largest carbon pool in the agricultural landscape considered here is the soil with a share of 76%. In the aboveground biomass and belowground biomass of woody plants, 19% and 5% are stored, respectively. In the investigated land use systems, hedges and copses show the highest C_org stock per unit area with 414 Mg/ha.