Study of the soil carbon dynamics and regional estimates of carbon sequestration in Sardinia soils linking the rothc model to GIS databases

In view of a rapidly changing climate the soils have received an increasing amount of attention over the last two decades. Soil may cause an important feedback to climate change. If carbon (C) is released from soil to the atmosphere climate change will be exacerbated. On the other hand, if more C is accumulated in soil and the emissions decrease, climate change will be retarded, consequently changes in soil C content can have a large effect on the global C budget. The estimation of soil C content is of pressing concern for soil protection and in mitigation strategies for global warming.There are still many uncertainties and unanswered questions related to this issue of C accounting and the assessment of soil C amount in Mediterranean regions is even more difficult. There are few studies about C soil content in Sardinia, and consequently in this context drawn on the goal of my thesis.In this work a modeling approaches based on a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) was used for the estimation soil organic C in Sardinia soil. The overlapping of different layers in a GIS environment has allowed to collect the necessary inputs at Rothamsted C model run, while the validation of this was made possible by a collection of about 160 ground data scattered throughout the island area. By linking GIS, that contain detailed information on soils, land use and climate with dynamic simulation models for the turnover of organic C, it is possible to estimate the impacts of climatic changes on soil C stocks.