The Effect of Vegetation Restoration in Soil Organic Carbon Storage

Abstract

This review paper has been made to assess the past studies reviewed regarding vegetation restoration and its impact on soil organic carbon content. A Vegetation Restoration is an influential technique that can be used to respond to these effects. As a response to the global biodiversity crisis, more restoration actions have been taken. The European Union Council’s results on kinds of diversity after 2010 highlight words like stopping biodiversity loss and the breakdown of ecological systems in the European Union. The United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity’s growth strategy for 2022, which includes restoring at least 15% of degraded ecosystems, has made this possible. Soil types are among the most vulnerable resources on the planet due to factors such as climate change, land degradation, and the reduction of biodiversity. Organic Carbon, the top meter of soil, could potentially store three times as much carbon as is found in the air and almost twice as much as in plants. For the systematic literature review, past papers on vegetation restoration have been extracted from the latest papers of 2013 and onwards to 2022. The summary of results included key findings of the papers, the interpretation of papers reviewed, and the relevant references. Thirty papers were reviewed and selected from authentic databases and assessed that vegetation restoration significantly affects soil organic carbon (SOC). The findings also exhibit that the primary sources of prediction for SOC dynamics include changes in soil properties, quality, the number of carbon inputs, and the composition of the C pool. Vegetation restoration also plays an important role in improving the services of ecosystems such as controlling the erosion of soil and increasing the carbon sequestration. Moreover, some papers concluded that vegetation restoration positively influences on the SOC. Moreover, to increase the generalizability of the study, implications and future research indications have also been included in the end.