Organic Carbon Storage in the Tropical Peat Soils and Its Impact on Climate Change

Soil carbon is one of the essential elements for soil quality, holding soil nutrients for plant uptake, soil conservation, and overall the natural soil systems that are the fundamental requirements for the soil security, and food production. Moreover, Peat soils are the vital storehouses of organic carbon where there is a scope to use this carbon for mitigating climate change. In this study, we consider three major soil series of peat soils in Bangladesh: sapric peat, hemic peat, and fabric peat. Single study on the estimation of organic carbon stocks in the peat soils of Bangladesh was conducted in the 1970s. For understanding the carbon emission, we conducted the same peat soils up to 100 cm depths. The research shows that the organic carbon in peat soils in Bangladesh was about 0.12 Pg in 2018 whereas it was about 0.25 Pg during the 1970s. So, it has observed that soil organic carbon loss is alarming in the tropical country like Bangladesh and the half of the total organic carbon has already reduced by the last 50 years. These reduced carbons have huge impact on climate change and global warming. It has also found that the carbon storage percentage is higher with the increasing soil profile depth from the soil surface. So, the management should be considered not only the surface soils but also the sub-surface soils. Another relationship found between the bulk density and carbon storage is inversely proportional (r = −0.65) in the peats soils. These peat soils are losing their carbon due to the decrease of inundation level by climate change, intensive agricultural and even used as fuel for cooking purposes by the local stakeholders. There were no regulations, maintenances, laws, even the evaluation and assessment of carbon storage was not appropriately estimated in Bangladesh. By representing the carbon percentage data and their changes over times will help to develop and implement the proper mitigation action which may improve soil health, soil quality, food security, and mitigation of climate changes.