A Bioeconomic Analysis of Soil Carbon
Sequestration in Agroforests
Russell Wise and Oscar Cacho
Contributed Paper to the 46th Annual Conference of the Australian
Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. Canberra, Australian Capital Territory,
13-15th February 2002
Agroforestry can help in the battle to control global warming by sequestering
atmospheric CO2. Most attention so far has been on the carbon sequestered in
trees, but soils can also contain considerable amounts of carbon, some of which
is released upon harvest. There has been little quantification of the impact
of different land-uses on soil carbon levels due to the high costs and lengthy
time periods required to accurately measure soil carbon fluctuations, within
and across sites, and over an entire project lifespan. This study attempts to
quantify soil carbon changes under agroforestry systems using a modeling approach.
The net effects on carbon storage of implementing agroforestry depend on the
carbon content of the land-use practices that are replaced. Also, agroforestry
projects will impact upon soil carbon levels by preventing land clearing and
by maintaining carbon already in the soils. These issues are evaluated from
the standpoint of individual landholders, and implications for management of
agroforestry systems are discussed.