Response to the Letter to the Editor 'The role of South American grazing lands in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. A reply to: 'Reassessing the role of grazing lands in carbon-balance estimations: Meta-analysis and review' by Viglizzo et al. (2019).'

摘要

We thank Villarino et al. (2020) for their thorough comments on our article (Viglizzo et al., 2019). We first must make clear that our study was deliberately focused on the hypothetical implications that sequestration of soil organic carbon (SOC) in grazing lands may have on the carbon balance in MERCOSUR countries and the national reports of GHG inventories that follow the IPCC (2006) methodological guidelines. We reaffirm the hypothesis that "steady state is not a generalizable condition and the capacity of grazing lands to sequester C in soil is probably misestimated in current assessments". This supports our statement that the extensive grazing lands of the MERCOSUR can produce SOC surpluses that eventually could not only offset GHG rural emissions, but could also partially or totally offset GHG emitted by non-rural sectors.