Assessment of Soil Carbon Variability through Geo-Statistical Approach– A Review

Soil carbon is a key indicator of soil quality and health, it has significant role in soil fertility and crop productivity. Soil system is both source and sink of green house gases and best crop management and soil resource management can sequester atmospheric carbon di oxide through terrestrial carbon cycle. Soil carbon density and stock at different scale is assessed worldwide to understand the soil carbon status and potentiality of carbon sequestration. Grid sampling, stratified sampling, nested hierarchical etc are commonly used sampling techniques applied for soil carbon assessment and survey. Land use type and history under different soil type can control variability of soil carbon density under specified climate and landscape. Geostatistical techniques like semivariogram analysis and kriging interpolation techniques indicate the nature of soil carbon variability and subsequently generate carbon variability map with estimation prediction error. Monitoring of soil carbon changes at different scale within country are being followed by geo-spatial technologies.