Effects of land clearing for agriculture on soil organic carbon stocks in drylands: A meta-analysis

To improve our understanding of clearing natural ecosystems for cropland
on soil organic carbon stocks in drylands, we searched for related
peer-reviewed research papers published from 1980 to 2022 on the Web of
Science (https://www.webofscience.com) and the Scopus Database
(https://www.scopus.com) (accessed on 30th April 2022). Then, we screened
papers for integrity, relevance, and scientific merit under the following
criteria: (1) We made sure all studies were independent and based on
field-measured data; (2) Each study had to report paired SOC stocks of
cropland and adjacent natural ecosystems with the same or a similar suite
of environmental factors; (3) Studies need to explicitly present results
on SOC stocks or concentrations for certain depths and areas; (4) Studies
have specified the types of natural ecosystems that were converted to
cropland, which are used as criteria for defining CNEC types. Finally, we
winnowed results to a total of 159 scientific journal articles, comprising
242 sites with 1379 paired soil layer observations from 601 paired soil
profiles.