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Land use change, but not soil macrofauna, affects soil aggregates and aggregate-associated C content in central highlands of Kenya

  • Soils, Sec 3 • Remediation and Management of Contaminated or Degraded Lands • Research Article
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Abstract

Purpose

Though land use change has been shown to have great influence on soil structure and C storage, little is still known how these effects change over the long term, especially in Africa. Thus, a study was conducted in central highlands of Kenya to evaluate changes in soil aggregates and aggregate-associated C content across four land use types.

Methods

The four land use types included (1) an undisturbed bush land, (2) over 50 years old grazed pasture, (3) over 80 years old coffee plantation, and (4) a maize field cultivated continuously for 3 years. It was hypothesized that soil aggregates and aggregate-associated C would decrease with increasing soil disturbance caused by tillage or exerted by livestock hooves, with the magnitude of these effects being reduced by abundance of earthworms and termites.

Results and discussions

Land use type significantly affected soil aggregates especially, large macroaggregates and microaggregates. The weight of large macroaggregates in bush land (14.4 g 100 g−1 soil) was more than 20 times higher than in maize field (0.6 g 100 g−1). On the contrary, the weight of microaggregates in maize field (41.2 g 100 g−1) was more than double that recorded in bush land (18.8 g 100 g−1). Aggregate-associated C showed magnitude of differences similar to those of soil aggregates. However, the abundance of earthworms and termites generally showed weak or no correlation with soil aggregate fractions and aggregate-associated C.

Conclusion

Our results shows that land use change can significantly influence soil aggregation and C content, which could have far-reaching implications for the long term C sequestration.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Lukelysia Nyawira, laboratory technician at World Agroforestry and Boniface Muliro, technician at the department of Environmental and Biosystems Engineering, for their assistance in aggregate analyses. We also appreciate John Kimotho and Ferdinand Anyika from the soil science section of the department of Land Resource Management and Agricultural Technology (LARMAT) for helping us with soil sampling and chemical analyses.

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Correspondence to Solomon Kamau.

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Morlue, B., Kamau, S., Ayuke, F.O. et al. Land use change, but not soil macrofauna, affects soil aggregates and aggregate-associated C content in central highlands of Kenya. J Soils Sediments 21, 1360–1370 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-021-02895-1

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