Field measurement and modeling of soil organic carbon in no-till experiments in the USA

No-tillage management was first applied in the US nearly 50 years ago, but adoption of no-till on a significant area of US cropland has only occurred during the past 2 decades. Adoption rates were most rapid from the mid 1980s to mid 1990s, driven in part by governmental programs stressing conservation compliance. Adoption to date has been greatest in the Midwest corn-soybean belt and in the Chesapeake and northern piedmont areas in the eastern US. Use of no-till was motivated initially as an erosion control measure and that is still a dominant justification, along with labor and energy savings compared with conventional tillage. No-till use in semiarid regions (e.g. Great Plains), by helping to conserve water, provides opportunities to intensify crop rotations and eliminate bare summer-fallowing. More recently, interest in no-till as a means to promote carbon sequestration as a greenhouse gas mitigating strategy has gained attention