AGRICULTURAL SOIL ORGANIC CARBON BASELINE IN THE HIGHLANDS OF JALISCO

Among the global environmental problems on earth are global warming and climate change.These problems are caused by the greenhouse effect, a natural phenomenon occurring on earth, accentuated by gases present in the atmosphere called Greenhouse Gases (GHG).Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is one of these gases.Agriculture is an option as a solution to absorb and maintain this CO 2 in the soil in order to reduce its concentration in the air.But first it is necessary to identify the current status of soil organic carbon (COS) in agricultural land, in order to develop and promote agronomic practices that reduce GHG emissions and retain COS.An initial action is to evaluate the COS content to determine its baseline and sequestration potential in agricultural lands in the Altos de Jalisco, which is the objective of this study.The soil database of the Productive Potential studies of the National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural and Livestock Research (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Forestales Agrcolas y Pecuarias) was used.The vector map of agricultural use of Los Altos de Jalisco from INEGI was used.COS was estimated with the expression:. For each variable, raster maps were generated and using map algebra procedures, COS was calculated for the agricultural lands in the area under study.It was found that the agricultural lands of the region under study have low and very low levels of COS, with less than 1.5% in more than 92% of the area.These results show a high capacity for COS sequestration, but they also show a high level of biological degradation of the agricultural lands of the Altos de Jalisco, with an important influence of rainfall.