Monday, 7 November 2005
8

Incorporation of Litter C into Soil Aggregates under No-Till and Conventional Till Management of Dryland Cropping Systems.

Gabe Olchin, Colorado State Univeristy, 1170 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, CO 80523-1170, Stephen Ogle, Natural Resource Ecology Lab, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, and Johan Six, Department of Agronomy and Range Science, University of California, Davis, CA 95616.

The objective of this experiment was to determine the amount of litter C incorporated into soil aggregate fractions under two tillage regimes in dryland agriculture. Mixtures of uniformly 13C-labeled (δ13C ‰ = 797.55) wheat residues were incorporated into incubation cores containing soil (δ13C ‰ = -17.71) under no-till (NT) and simulated conventional tillage (CT) at the dryland agricultural experiment in Sterling, CO. Samples were collected initially and after a one year incubation to estimate stabilization rates of residue-derived C in physically defined C pools. This labeling study compared NT and CT treatments and provided valuable information on how soil disturbance influences litter C into soil aggregates. Under both tillage systems, 13C-labelled wheat residue was incorporated into aggregate fractions in the following order: coarse particulate organic matter (>250μm) > macroaggregates (>250μm) > microaggregates (>53μm) > silt + clay (<53μm) > microaggregates-within-macroaggregates > silt + clay-within-macroaggregates. As expected, residue incorporation was greatest in the 0-5cm layer under NT and distributed throughout the three depth layers (0-5cm, 5-15cm, 15-30cm) under CT.

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