Abstract
There is a significant knowledge gap in the area of management of the vast shelterbelt network currently existing on agricultural lands in Canada and across the world. Throughout eight decades of shelterbelt planting in Saskatchewan, Canada, there are no available records of shelterbelt management practices used by land managers, such as herbicides (H), fertilizers (F), irrigation (I), or tillage (T) applications, collectively referred to as HFIT management. The main objective of this large-scale study was to quantify the effects of HFIT management on shelterbelt carbon sequestration for six common tree and shrub species. Field data from 303 randomly selected shelterbelts across millions of hectares of agricultural land in three soil zones were combined with existing shelterbelt carbon stock curves for Saskatchewan, produced by a shelterbelt carbon management support tool, Belt-CaT, to estimate site-specific total ecosystem carbon (TEC) stocks. Estimated TEC stocks and annual rates for HFIT sites were compared to the no management sites used as a reference. HFIT management increased carbon stocks for the majority of species, four of six, resulting in higher TEC at any tree spacing, mostly at higher suitability sites. However, HFIT management effects were not consistent across individual species, land suitability, or planting designs. The top three HFIT management combinations for hybrid poplar were IT, HIT, and HI, for white spruce they were FT, IT, and FIT, and only FT benefited caragana shelterbelts. The lack of management practices makes unmanaged shelterbelts more unpredictable and unreliable, in terms of tree growth and carbon stocks sequestration potential.
Highlights
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This study filled a significant knowledge gap of shelterbelt management options.
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Herbicides (H), fertilizers (F), irrigation (I), or tillage (T) applications (i.e., HFIT) were studied.
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IT and HT applications increased C sequestration for most species, but I, H, and HFI did not.
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T, IT, HT, HF, HFT, HIT applications resulted in >100% increase in C sequestration across four species.
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Unmanaged shelterbelts have unpredictable and unreliable tree growth and C sequestration.
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Data availability
Data are available upon request.
Code availability
The Belt-CaT used in this study is freely available online (https://saskagroforestry.weebly.com/carbon-management-support-tool.html).
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Acknowledgements
This research was conducted by a team of researchers at the Centre for Northern Agroforestry and Afforestation at the University of Saskatchewan. Funding was provided by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC)’s Agricultural Greenhouse Gases Program (AGGP). We thank the AAFC Agroforestry Development Centre at Indian Head, SK for providing the shelterbelt tree database. We are grateful to Scott Wood, Brooke Howat, Rafaella Mayrinck, and Bryan Mood for their roles as field crew leaders. We express our appreciation to all students in the project and summer research assistants for collecting field data and surveys, including A. Bellinger, R. Berg, C. Canning, O. Laroque, T. Lubineki, B. Nykiforuk, Z. Person, and L. Rudd.
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Agriculture and Agri-Food (AAFC), Government of Canada.
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BYA: co-designed the study, performed all analyses, wrote the initial manuscript draft; CPL: co-designed the study, directed field data collection, revised the manuscript; KCJVR: co-designed the study, revised the manuscript.
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The questionnaire and methodology for this study was approved by the Human Research Ethics committee of the University of Saskatchewan (Ethics approval number: BEH 17-180).
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Amichev, B., Laroque, C. & Van Rees, K. Shelterbelt Management Practices for Maximized Ecosystem Carbon Stocks on Agricultural Landscapes in Saskatchewan, Canada. Environmental Management 68, 522–538 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01511-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-021-01511-9