continuous soil disturbance. Moreover, practices that help to
protect existing soil aggregates benefit from a broader consensus in
regions of the Boreal area than in other European regions: e.g. RT in
some cases occurs on up to 40% of land and ZT exceeds 10% (e.g.
Southern Finland). In contrast, measures to increase C-inputs, such
as RM (most of the Regions are under the average value of 13%) and
CCs (2% of the arable land on average), are not widely adopted.
Indeed, for these kinds of soils, due to both the low clay content and
the high relative SOC, there is a limited capacity to store C, which is
much lower than soils located in Central and Southern Europe:
therefore, the added organic carbon would be exposed to
degradation and will thus be lost.
Our findings are consistent with the outcomes of Lugato et al.
(2014a) who assessed SOC stocks by simulating the conversion
from arable land to different alternative management practices
(e.g. cover crops, reduced tillage, residue management) in
European regions. According to their work, an increase in C stock
may occur by: (i) converting to practices that reduce soil
disturbance (such as grassland and RT) in agricultural soils of
Central Europe (with n-potential by 10–20) and Northern Europe
(with n-potential 20); (iii) the combination of RT and straw
incorporation in those agricultural soils where there is a high
content of clay and SOC