Abstract—Conservation of SOC is of significant importance for maintaining soil fertility thus sustaining food production, particularly when soil erosion has been a tremendous issue facing the world. With abundant fertile black soil in cropland, Heilongjiang ranked the 2nd in terms of food production among 31 provinces of China in 2010. Meanwhile, soil erosion appeared severe due to specific geographic and climatic conditions thus the erosion of black soils of northeast caught much attentions of the Chinese government and investigators. This study adopted DNDC model to quantify the impact of alternative management practices on the preservation of SOC. Four scenarios of management alternatives were set including Base scenario, CR50% (50% of the straw were returned to cropland), CR90% (90% of the straw were returned to cropland), and MA (3600 kg C/ha manure were amended), for a 31-yr simulation. Results indicated that among all the farming alternatives, the straw return ratio appeared most potential to preserve the SOC content. Manure amendment, even though proved effective in other studies which transformed SOC from a decreasing to increasing trend, was a less role in our study due to the SOC background value in various regions as well as the limitation of the DNDC model. It could be concluded that urgent actions should be taken to prevent further loss of SOC and DNDC would play as an essential role for decision-making. 
 

Index Terms—SOC, straw return, China, manure amendment

Cite: Han Chen, Qing. Li, Changsheng. Li, Han. Zhang, Shanshan Liu, Libao Chai, and Chaoqing Yu, "Modeling SOC and Corn Yield Changes Under Alternative Management in Northeast China from 1980-2010," Journal of Advanced Agricultural Technologies, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 106-113, December 2015. Doi: 10.12720/joaat.2.2.106-113