APPLICATION OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE IN CARBON FARMING PRACTICES USING THE REAL-TIME SOIL SENSOR

摘要

Agricultural soil presents a significant potential for mitigating climate change as atmospheric carbon dioxide can be sequestered by improving the farming manners, which nowadays refer to an emerging concept named “Carbon Farming”. This paper presented a Carbon Farming case study in Aguri co. Ltd in Japan based on the technology of precision agriculture. The fields were investigated using the real-time soil spectrophotometer and the data collected from 9 fields from 2004 and 2008 were selected for a more detailed analysis. A significant temporal variability of TC was observed in each field from 2004 and 2008, which indicated the capacity of agricultural activities for sequestering carbon over times. However, the rates of sequestration are dynamic since the spatial variability of TC is also significant. The vertical distribution patterns of soil C and N in the top soil of 30 cm were also investigated and a sampling depth of 15-20cm by RTSS for carbon farming is recommended.