Searching for the best post-land abandonment management to enhance long-term carbon storage in Mediterranean mountain areas

Abstract

The abandonment of rural activities in the Mediterranean mid-mountains has led to the activation of revegetation processes, as well as the subsequent implementation of various management measures to mitigate the associated ecosystem disservices. Focusing on soil environment and its growing importance in a climate change scenario, it is of great interest to study how land management and landscape changes can affect, not only the soil carbon storage process, but also its dynamics. A study was conducted in La Rioja (Iberian System, Spain), comparing three post-abandonment management strategies: secondary succession, forest management, and shrub clearing and extensive grazing. These strategies were analysed in two types of soil environments (acid and alkaline) and for two depth ranges (0–20 cm and 20–40 cm). Laboratory analyses were performed on aggregate stability and soil organic carbon fractionation with regard to three aggregate sizes (< 2 mm, 2–5 mm, > 5 mm) and three density fractions (free labile, occluded, and heavy fraction). The results showed that: 1) SOC content in aggregates < 2 mm (relative to total SOC) increases with shrub clearing and grazing strategy in acid environments; 2) aggregate stability benefits from the implementation of afforestation in acid environments and from all three study strategies in alkaline ones; 3) in acid environments, the percentage of labile fractions (free and occluded) in afforested sites is significantly higher compared with shrubland, while in alkaline environments, recalcitrant SOC is significantly higher in shrub clearing sites. Thus, land management should be focused on SOC storage after land abandonment in Mediterranean mountainous environments.

Keywords

Mediterranean mountain / Soil organic carbon / Afforestation / Pastures / Natural revegetation

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Melani Cortijos-López: Writing – original draft, Visualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. Teodoro Lasanta: Writing – review & editing, Supervision. Erik Cammeraat: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources. Estela Nadal-Romero: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Methodology, Investigation, Conceptualization.

Declaration of competing interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This research project was supported by the MANMOUNT project (PID2019–105983RB-100) funded by the MICINN-FEDER (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the 570 PRX21/00375 project funded by the Ministry of Universities of Spain from the “Salvador de Madariaga” programme. The ‘Geoenvironmental Processes and Global Change’ (E02_23R) research group is financed by the Aragón Government and the European Social Fund (ESF-FSE). The first author is working with an FPI contract (PRE2020–094509) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness associated to the MANMOUNT project.

We are thankful for the help of laboratory and fieldwork technicians from the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology (IPE-CSIC) and the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics (IBED-UvA) for their assistance during the field and laboratory works.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.geosus.2025.100265.

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