Description

Cultivating a permanent vegetation that covers the soil underneath and in alleys between the olive trees. The vegetation can be used as cover crops to cover and protect bare ground, and/or as inter crops where additional plants are grown parallel to the olive trees. The additional soil cover reduces erosion, increases biodiversity and provides additional carbon, which potentially increases soil organic carbon (SOC). On the other side, the additional vegetation might increase evapotranspiration, which might be critical as olive orchards are often situated in water scarce regions.

Mechanism of effect

By growing additional crops on the ground, more atmospheric carbon is removed and stored in the form of biomass. This additional biomass will potentially increase carbon inputs into the soil and, therefore, increase the SOC. Beside the increase of SOC, ground vegetation reduces soil and SOC loss by erosion. A study of Marquez-Garcia et al. (2024) shows that conservation management (ground cover vegetation and no tillage) can reduce erosion by up to 85 % and accordingly reduce SOC losses by 76 %. Torrus-Castillo et al. (2022) found that ground vegetation can help to improve the nutrient use efficiency by reducing nutrient losses.

Effect on organic carbon stocks

Reference situation: No ground cover vegetation