Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics in Korean Paddy Soils

Korean paddy soils have long been almost uniformly managed throughout the whole country with flooded, deep tillage, puddlling, transplanting, and uncovering after harvest. Management of soil organic carbon could be more important in the sources of green house gases. However, soil organic carbon dynamics were not been studied for Korean paddy soils. Therefore, we evaluated the changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) of paddy soils between 1999 and 2003 at the same locations nationwide except islands. Soil organic carbon tends to increase in Inceptisols, which is predominant soil order for Korean paddy soils, from 1999 to 2003. Soil organic carbon increases in topographically plain paddy soils was greater than in valley soils, and was considerably high in predominant types of paddy soils (i.e., well adapted paddy soils, sandy paddy soils, and poorly drained paddy soils) but low and stable in the saline paddy soils. We also found that clay paddy soils are greater in soil organic carbon than sandy paddy soils. Through this study, we concluded that a proper management of paddy soils could contribute to soil organic carbon storage, which imply that the Korean paddy soils could help to enhance carbon dioxide sequestration via soil organic matter into the soil.