Development of a Soil Organic Carbon Baseline for Otjozondjupa, Namibia

Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN) has been piloted in 14 countries and will be scaled up to over 120 countries. As a LDN pilot country, Namibia developed sub-national LDN baselines in Otjozondjupa Region. In addition to the three LDN indicators (soil organic carbon, land productivity and land cover change), Namibia also regards bush encroachment as an important form of land degradation. We collected 219 soil profiles and used Random Forest modelling to develop the soil organic carbon stock baseline. Values range between 0.53 and 4.27 kg/m2 in the sandy Otjozondjupa soils. LDN baselines were integrated into other national planning processes to add value to LDN products. Analyses of the relationship between soil carbon and land cover change, especially from grassland to bushland, increased the usefulness of soil carbon maps for the Integrated Regional Land Use Planning process. Local ownership of LDN baseline development, from data collection to digital soil mapping, was crucial for local stakeholders.