Increasing carbon stock potential in degraded lands and reducing atmospheric CO2 through field inoculation of cyanobacteria

Document Type : Research

Author

Assistant professor, Department of Range and Watershed Management, Faculty of Natural Resources, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran

Abstract

Micro-organisms of biological soil crusts have a major role in carbon (C) cycling and atmospheric CO2 removal. Currently, the ability of erodible soils to store atmospheric C is reduced. Thus, we assessed how inoculating soil cyanobacteria onto degraded soil affects C sequestration from the atmosphere. The existing cyanobacteria (Nostoc sp., Oscillatoria sp. and Lyngbya sp.) for the C sequestration were proliferated. They were inoculated on the 40 m2 plots located in degraded land. After 83 (middle of the period) and 172 (end of the period) days, we measured the effect of this inoculation on soil organic C, calculated potential C sequestration, and potential CO2 removal from the atmosphere. The results showed that in the control treatment, the sequestrated carbon in the middle and at the end of the experiment was 0.25 and 0.27 g.m-2.day-1, respectively. Inoculation of cyanobacteria led to a significant increase of 312% and 226% of C sequestration in the middle and end of the experiment, respectively. After 172 days, the rate of C sequestration and removal of CO2 by inoculation of cyanobacteria was estimated to be 3.59 and 13.17 ton.ha-1.year-1, respectively, which was 1.10 and 4.03 ton.ha-1.year-1 in control. The results showed that inoculation of cyanobacteria by hydro-seeding technique before the wet season (early autumn) and at least 1.5 g.m-2 of biomass has the desired effect, and is also approved economically. Eventually, field-scale inoculation of cyanobacteria could be considered as a bio-based tool for sustainable development goals through carbon sequestration and rehabilitation of lands.

Keywords

References

Ahlström A, Raupach MR, Schurgers G, Smith B, Arneth A, Jung M, ... Zeng N. 2015. The dominant role of semi-arid ecosystems in the trend and variability of the land CO2 sink. Science. 348(6237): 895–899.
Andersen RA. (Ed.). 2005. Algal culturing techniques. Elsevier.
Batjes NH. 1996. Total carbon and nitrogen in the soils of the world. European Journal of Soil Science. 47(2): 151–163.
Belnap J, Welter JR, Grimm NB, Barger N, Ludwig JA. 2005. Linkages between microbial and hydrologic processes in arid and semiarid watersheds. Ecology. 86(2): 298–307.
Bertocchi C, Navarini L, Cesàro A, Anastasio M. 1990. Polysaccharides from cyanobacteria. Carbohydrate Polymers. 12(2): 127–153.
Bertrand I, Ehrhardt F, Alavoine G, Joulian C, Issa OM, Valentin C. 2014. Regulation of carbon and nitrogen exchange rates in biological soil crusts by intrinsic and land use factors in the Sahel area. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 72: 133–144.
Bowker MA, Belnap J, Davidson DW Phillips SL. 2005. Evidence for micronutrient limitation of biological soil crusts: importance to arid‐lands restoration. Ecological Applications 15(6): 1941–1951.
Bracmort K. 2011. Geoengineering: Governance and technology policy. DIANE Publishing, 39 p.
Chae N, Kang H, Kim Y, Hong SG, Lee BY, Choi T. 2016. CO2 efflux from the biological soil crusts of the High Arctic in a later stage of primary succession after deglaciation, Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard, Norway. Applied Soil Ecology. 98: 92–102.
Chamizo S, Cantón Y, Miralles I, Domingo F. 2012. Biological soil crust development affects physicochemical characteristics of soil surface in semiarid ecosystems. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 49: 96–105.
Colica G, Li H, Rossi F, Li D, Liu Y, De Philippis R. 2014. Microbial secreted exopolysaccharides affect the hydrological behavior of induced biological soil crusts in desert sandy soils, Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 68: 62–70.
Costa JAV, Linde GA, Atala DIP, Mibielli GM, Krüger RT. 2000. Modelling of growth conditions for cyanobacterium Spirulina platensis in microcosms. World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology. 16(1): 15–18.
Ehlers K, Bunemann EK, Oberson A, Frossard E, Frostegard A, Yuejian M, Bakken LR. 2008. Extraction of soil bacteria from a Ferralsol. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 40: 1940–1946.
Garrity GM, Boone DR, Castenholz RW. 2001. Bergey’s manual of systematic bacteriology. (2nd ed.). New York, USA. 1: 173 p.
Harvey RA. 2007. Microbiology. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 395 p.
Herzog HJ. 2011. Scaling up carbon dioxide capture and storage: From megatons to gig tons. Energy Economics. 33(4): 597–604.
Housman DC, Powers HH, Collins AD, Belnap J. 2006. Carbon and nitrogen fixation differ between successional stages of biological soil crusts in the Colorado Plateau and Chihuahuan Desert. Journal of Arid Environments. 66(4): 620–634.
IPCC. 2014. Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Exit EPA Disclaimer Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Edenhofer O.R. Pichs-Madruga Y. Sokona E. Farahani S. Kadner K. Seyboth A. Adler I. Baum S. Brunner P. Eickemeier B. Kriemann J. Savolainen S. Schlömer C. von Stechow T. Zwickel J.C. Minx (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.
Jeffries DL, Link SO, Klopatek JM. 1993. CO2 fluxes of cryptogrammic crusts. New Phytologist. 125(1): 163–173.
Kaplan A, Schwarz R, Lieman-Hurwitz J, Ronen-Tarazi M, Reinhold L. 1994. Physiological and molecular studies on the response of cyanobacteria to changes in the ambient inorganic carbon concentration. In: Bryant D.A. (eds) The Molecular Biology of Cyanobacteria. Advances in Photosynthesis, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht.  pp. 469–485.
Kheirfam H. 2020. Increasing soil potential for carbon sequestration using microbes from biological soil crusts. Journal of Arid Environments. 172: 104022.
Kheirfam H, Roohi M. 2020. Accelerating the formation of biological soil crusts in the newly dried-up lakebeds using the inoculation-based technique. Science of the Total Environment. 706: 136036.
Kheirfam H, Sadeghi SHR, Homaee M, Zarei Darki B, 2017a. Quality improvement of an erosion-prone soil through microbial enrichment. Soil and Tillage Research. 165: 230–238.
Kheirfam H, Sadeghi SHR, Zarei Darki B. 2020. Soil conservation in an abandoned agricultural rain-fed land through inoculation of cyanobacteria. Catena. 187: 104341.
Kheirfam H, Sadeghi SHR, Zarei Darki B, Homaee M. 2017b. Controlling rainfall-induced soil loss from small experimental plots through inoculation of bacteria and cyanobacteria. Catena. 152: 40–46.
Kumar ChP, Yashoda P, Dinesh P, Shashwat N. 2013. Study of soil cyanobacteria to evaluate metabolite production during various incubations in their culture filtrate. Scholars Academic Journal of Biosciences (SAJB). 1(5): 154–158.
Le Quéré C, Raupach MR, Canadell JG, Marland G, Bopp L, Ciais P, Conway TJ. Doney SC, Feely RA, Foster P, Friedlingstein P, … Ian Woodward F. 2009. Trends in the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide. Nature Geoscience. 2(12): 831–836.
Li H, Rao B, Wang G, Shen S, Li D, Hu Ch, Liu Y. 2014. Spatial heterogeneity of cyanobacteria-inoculated sand dunes significantly influences artificial biological soil crusts in the Hopq Desert (China), Environmental Earth Sciences. 71: 245–253.
Mager DM. 2010. Carbohydrates in cyanobacterial soil crusts as a source of carbon in the southwest Kalahari, Botswana. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 42(2): 313–318.
Mager DM, Thomas AD. 2011. Extracellular polysaccharides from cyanobacterial soil crusts: A review of their role in dryland soil processes. Journal of Arid Environments. 75(2): 91–97.
Maqubela MP, Mnkeni PNS, Malam Issa O, Fernández P, Teresa M, D’Acqui LP. 2009. Nostoc cyanobacterial inoculation in South African agricultural soils enhances soil structure, fertility, and maize growth. Plant and Soil. 315: 79–92.
Meersmans J, De Ridder F, Canters F, De Baets S, Van Molle M. 2008. A multiple regression approach to assess the spatial distribution of Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) at the regional scale (Flanders, Belgium). Geoderma. 143(1–2): 1–13.
Miralles I, Cantón Y, Solé-Benet A. 2011. Two-dimensional porosity of crusted silty soils: indicators of soil quality in semiarid rangelands?. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 75: 1289–1301.
Nisha R, Kaushik A, Kaushik CP. 2007. Effect of indigenous cyanobacterial application on structural stability and productivity of an organically poor semi-arid soil. Geoderma. 138(1): 49–56.
Olivier JGJ, Janssens-Maenhout G, Muntean M, Peters JAHW. 2015. Trends in global CO2 emissions: 2015 Report, The Hague: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency: Ispra: European Commission, Joint Research Centre.
Powell JT, Chatziefthimiou AD, Banack SA, Cox PA, Metcalf JS. 2015. Desert crust microorganisms, their environment, and human health. Journal of Arid Environments. 112: 127–133.
Prasanna R, Joshi M, Rana A, Shivay YS, Nain L. 2012. Influence of co-inoculation of bacteria-cyanobacteria on crop yield and C-N sequestration in soil under rice crop. World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology. 28(3): 1223–1235.
Rossi F, Olguín EJ, Diels L, De Philippis R. 2015. Microbial fixation of CO2 in water bodies and in drylands to combat climate change, soil loss and desertification. New Biotechnology. 32(1): 109–120.
Sadeghi SHR, Kheirfam H, Zarei Darki B. 2020. Controlling runoff generation and soil loss from field experimental plots through inoculating cyanobacteria, Journal of Hydrology. 585: 124814.
Safriel UN. 2007. The assessment of global trends in land degradation. In: Sivakumar M.V.K., Ndiang’ui N. (eds) Climate and Land Degradation. Environmental Science and Engineering (Environmental Science). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.  pp. 1–38. 
Scholze M, Knorr W, Arnell NW, Prentice IC. 2006. A climate-change risk analysis for world ecosystems. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 103(35): 13116–13120.
Sears JT, Prithiviraj B. 2012. Seeding of large areas with biological soil crust starter culture formulations: using an aircraft disbursable granulate to increase stability, fertility and CO2 sequestration on a landscape scale. In 2012 IEEE Green Technologies Conference. pp. 1–3.
Stone R. 2008. Have desert researchers discovered a hidden loop in the carbon cycle? Science. 320(5882): 1409–1410.
Tiwari ON, Singh BV, Mishra U, Singh AK, Dhar DW, Singh PK. 2005. Distribution and physiological characterization of Cyanobacteria isolated from arid zones of Rajasthan. Tropical Ecology, 46(2): 165–171.
Ushio M, Miki T, Balser TC. 2013. A coexisting fungal-bacterial bommunity stabilizes soil decomposition activity in a microcosm experiment. Plos One, 8(11): e80320, 1–7.
Valencia Y, Camapum J, Torres FA. 2014. Influence of biomineralization on the physico-mechanical profile of a tropical soil affected by erosive processes, Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 74: 98–99.
Walkley A, Black IA. 1934. An examination of the Degtjareff method for determining soil organic matter, and a proposed modification of the chromic acid titration method. Soil Science. 37(1): 29–38.
Wang W, Liu Y, Li D, Hu C, Rao B. 2009. Feasibility of cyanobacterial inoculation for biological soil crusts formation in desert area. Soil Biology and Biochemistry. 41(5): 926–929.
Wang W, Nemani R. 2016. Dynamic responses of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration to global temperature changes between 1850 and 2010. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. 33(2): 247–258.
Washbourne CL, Lopez-Capel E, Renforth P, Ascough PL Manning DA. 2015. Rapid removal of atmospheric CO2 by urban soils. Environmental Science & Technology. 49(9): 5434–5440.
Wilske B, Burgheimer J, Maseyk K, Karnieli A, Zaady E, Andreae MO, Yakir D, Kesselmeier J. 2009. Modeling the variability in annual carbon fluxes related to biological soil crusts in a Mediterranean shrubland. Biogeosciences Discussions. 6(4): 7295–7324.
Yoshimura K, Onda Y, Kato H. 2015. Evaluation of radiocaesium wash-off by soil erosion from various land uses using USLE plots. Journal of Environmental Radioactivity. 139: 362–369.
Zhao Y, Qin N, Weber B, Xu M. 2014. Response of biological soil crusts to raindrop erosivity and underlying influences in the hilly Loess Plateau region, China. Biodiversity and Conservation. 23(7): 1669–1686.

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 10 July 2021
  • Revise Date: 25 August 2021
  • Accept Date: 20 September 2021

Share

How to cite

Statistics