Kan våra jordar rädda klimatet?

Sammanfattning: Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from land use, and increasing carbon storage in soils, is an important climate mitigation strategy. I conducted a literature study based on 174 articles to investigate the potential of temperate forest-, agricultural- and pasture land and urban parks to store carbon in soils; identified measures that could increase their storage potential by increasing the rate of sequestration of atmospheric carbon or slow the rate of carbon loss from soils and vegetation; and used these results to estimate potential carbon uptake by the Municipality of Lund, Sweden to 2030. I find that generally urban parks (0,4 ton C/ha/year) followed by forests and pasture lands (both 0,3 ton C/ha/year) act as carbon sinks, while agricultural land is a source emitting 0,22 ton C/ha/year on average. I find that plantation of legumes in pasture land is one of the most effective measures to increase carbon sequestration among the four land uses. However, given the distribution of land in Lund (50% agriculture, 24% forest, 8,5% pasture and 0,13% urban parks) and the municipal ownership being largest among agricultural land, the focus should be on turning this land into carbon sinks thus preventing further emissions. If the most effective measures of reduced tillage in agricultural land, forest conservation, plantation of legumes in pasture land and fertilization of urban parks were taken, I estimate that Lund Municipality could take up as much as 7900 additional tons of carbon in their soils from now until 2030. However, local field samplings must be performed in order to determine the exact amount of carbon storage and rates of uptake within the municipality.