Investigating the carbon storage in different climatic regions and the affecting factors in Kordestan Province

In recent decades, climate change and global warming have become to one of the critical global challenges that have attracted the attention of researchers. Knowing the effects of climate change on soil carbon can be used as the best tools regarding to understand the soil carbon cycle, therefore, this study was carried out to investigate and compare the amount of carbon storage in different climatic region, as well as to determine the most important environmental factors (soil factors, precipitation and elevation), affecting the amount of carbon storage in all three Dezly regions (wet), Naran (arid) and Gardaneh Morvarid (semi-arid) in Kurdistan province. To do so, six, three, and four sites were selected in the Dazli, Neran and Gardaneh Morvarid, respectively. To study the physical and chemical properties of soil in each site, three profiles were drilled from 0 to 50 cm depth (total of 39 soil samples). In order to statistical analysis, analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) and regression were used. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the amount of carbon storage in our studied areas, so that the highest and lowest amount of carbon storage were in Dezly (9.56 ± 1.16, ton/ha) and Gardaneh Morvarid (5.45 ± 1.08, ton/ha), respectively. The results also showed that there were a linear and positive relationship between the amount of carbon storage and soil P content and elevation in all regions. In addition, the results of stepwise regression showed that soil limestone (R = 0.52), nitrogen fertilizer (R = 0.71), and altitude (R = 0.83) were the most important factors affecting carbon storage in Dezly, Naran and Gardaneh Morvarid, respectively. The results of this study highlighted that climate change (get dry) could reduce soil carbon storage. Given the variability of environmental factors in different climates, it is suggesting that different methods could be used to manage carbon storage in each climate.