Changes in soil carbon stocks from 1960 to 2000 in the main Belgian cropland areas

Inventories of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks for 1960, 1990 and 2000 have recently become available for Belgium. From these inventories we selected three agricultural regions (Polders, Loam belt and Condroz) with 60 to 80 % of the agricultural area under cropland in order to analyse the driving forces of the changes in SOC stocks over time. The observed values of SOC stocks of typical soil associations for each agricultural region are compared to simulations with the RothC soil carbon model. After estimating the local parameters by fitting the model to SOC values from a long term experiment... Mehr ...