Soil Carbon Map: Africa

The soils of Africa hold an important soil organic carbon (SOC) pool that is distributed very inhomogeneously over the continent. Values range from very low or negligible levels in the deserts of the Sahara, the Kalahari, and the Horn of Africa to very high in the wetlands of Sudan (Sudd), Democratic Republic of Congo (Ngiri–Tumba–Maingombe), Congo (Sangha–Nouabale-Ndoki), Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania, and the Barotse Floodplain in Zambia. The soils of the tropical zone contain slightly more carbon (C) than the soils of the savannah regions. From the amended version of the Harmonized World Soil Database, soil C stocks for continental Africa have been calculated as 80.1 Gt C for the layers of 0–30 cm and 74.5 Gt C for the depth of 30–100 cm (this gives a total of 154.6 Gt C for 0–100 cm depth). The soils of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan hold the most SOC with 19.11 and 12.65 Gt, respectively. Various estimates place the total terrestrial C pool of Africa (this includes aboveground vegetation and also all SOC, not just that in the upper 1 m) at between 250 and 280 Gt. In this context, soil holds between 55% and 70% of the total African terrestrial C pool. It should be noted that data for African SOC pools and sinks are quite imprecise and that the uncertainties associated with these values can be very large. Significant additional effort and investment are required to improve these estimates and spatial resolution of the soil biophysical properties in order to better quantify the impact of human activities on the SOC reservoir of Africa.

JONES Arwyn;  HIEDERER Roland;  MONTANARELLA Luca; 

2018-08-30

Taylor & Francis

JRC105552

9781498738903,