Adding Clays to Sandy Soils to Increase Carbon Storage

Soil carbon storage is often related to clay content and mineralogy. For example, in a dryland farming area (300 mm/year annual rainfall) of Western Australia, carbon storage increased systematically with increasing clay content. Carbon storage in the surface 0.1 m was 42.5 Mg CO2-e/ha in soils with 1.7% clay compared to 99.1 Mg CO2-e/ha for soils with 9.1% clay. Similar results are evident in other data-sets, with carbon storage being related to site water balance, clay content and soil chemical fertility. We thus investigated whether soil carbon storage could be manipulated in sandy soils by adding clay. Clays are often added to farmed sandy soils to overcome water repellency and to reduce nutrient losses by leaching, but are not considered as a carbon management tool. The combined effects can improve plant productivity and thus carbon inputs to soil carbon pools. Bauxite processing residue (10% clay) had been applied in 1982 to sandy soils at different rates in an area with 760 mm/year annual rainfall. Application of 25 Mg clay/ha resulted in an increase in soil carbon content of 47.7 Mg CO2-e/ha. Soils were sampled to a depth of 0.3 m, with most (65%) of the increase being in the surface 0.1 m. Globally, there are large areas of sandy soils occurring across several soil taxonomic orders. In this presentation we describe the implications of clay amendments for increasing the carbon storage in such soils, and suggest areas of further investigation.