ABSTRACT
Judicious nutrient management is crucial to soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration in tropical soils. Management practices or technologies that increase carbon input to the soil and reduce carbon loss or both lead to net carbon sequestration in soils. There exists a close link between soil erosion/degradation, climate change, and poverty. The community-based natural resources management is a useful strategy for judicious governance. Soil carbon loss could be decreased by adopting conservation agriculture and minimizing soil disturbance, checking erosion through reduced tillage intensity, and using low quality organic inputs. Improving agricultural and land-use policies in degraded lands, such as marginal land and eroding landscapes, offers an enormous opportunity for enhancing carbon sequestration. Soils of most agro-ecosystems may have lost 30–50 % of the antecedent SOC pool in temperate regions and 50–75 % in the tropics. Any land reclamation practice which improve soil structure and enhance soil quality lead to carbon sequestration.
