Understand mechanisms and processes
governing the storage and flow of carbon pools in soils that support California's
diverse ecosystems;From 2001 to 2006, the Keamey Foundation of Soil Science will commence a mission on Soil Carbon and Its Impact on California Terrestrial Ecosystems. Focuses of the mission are as follows:
Understand mechanisms and processes
governing the storage and flow of carbon pools in soils that support California's
diverse ecosystems;Quantify impacts of anthropogenic
inputs of water, nutrients, and pollutants on transformations of carbon in soils; Assess the roles soil carbon
may play on emissions of green-house gases, and Analyze strategies and policy
options for soil carbon management that optimize natural resource utilization
and mitigate adverse effects of global climate changes.It is expected that mechanistic approaches will be employed to quantify factors
affecting processes governing flows of carbon and radiatively active trace gas
in soils and at the soil-atmosphere interface. The mission encompasses a broad
scope and necessitates the participation of multiple academic disciplines to
understand the multifaceted and dynamic changes of carbon in soils. Inter-discipline,
multi-investigator approaches are especially relevant and will be encouraged.
Natural resources and environmental management decisions pertaining to soil carbon must be evaluated at scales much larger than bench top reactors and experimental field plots. However, processes considered in models are frequently validated and calibrated with measurements made at limited spatial and temporal scales. It is imperative that studies of soil physical, chemical, and biological process dynamics are integrated across spatial and temporal scales within a landscape. A landscape is defined as a continuous, three-dimensional unit where biotic and abiotic soil processes occur at different spatial dimensions. Examples of landscapes are watersheds, catenae, and agricultural fields. This mission, especially, encourages soil carbon research that analyzes relationships between the scale of measurements and the scale at which the process of interest occurs and develops models appropriate for landscape scale interpretations.
In its various chemical forms, carbon plays central roles in the flow of energy
through the ecosystems, in defining the physical, chemical, and biological conditions
of soils, in governing the mass transfer of CO2 and radiatively active gases
across soil-atmosphere boundary. The importance of carbon, organic or inorganic,
in crop production has long been delineated and the bio- as well as geo-chemistry
of soil carbon has been the subject of investigations in the past. The concern
over global climate changes has introduced a new dimension to soil carbon research.
The international negotiations on global warming issues, held at The Hague, Netherlands (November 2000), collapsed due to differences of opinion over the ability of soils to act as a sink for carbon dioxide. The cause of the disagreement was based on a lack of relevant technical information for evaluating the capacity of soils to store carbon and the effect of various management activities on carbon cycling. Globally, the soil is a significant source of radiatively active trace gasses, most notably CH 4 and N2O, in the atmosphere. Soil management is an integral component in determining atmospheric trace gas compositions. The future regulatory requirements for the emissions of these gases are expected to influence how natural resources may be managed. Therefore, information on the dynamics of soil carbon transformations under California's diverse and intensely managed ecosystems is vital to derive strategies that help the State to maintain a competitive advantage in sustaining agricultural production and environmental quality. There is also a need to further understand the impact of soil C sequestration on soil fertility in a Mediterranean climate where soil C levels are normally attenuated due to climatic conditions and intensive management.
There are needs and academic interests to re-examine soil carbon in light of
the prospective roles it may play in global climate changes. Today, as in no
time in the past, the sustainability of natural resources in California as well
as around the world is vulnerable to the adverse effects of global climate changes
brought about by anthropogenic influences. Through a concerted effort lead by
the Keamey Foundation of Soil Science, researchers in California can make a
seminal contribution in advancing the scientific knowledge base needed to delineate
the role of soil in global carbon cycling and to adopt effective mitigation
technologies.
The research prospectus of this mission may include work that leads to further understanding of mechanisms and processes governing carbon cycling processes and trace gas dynamics and the development of quantitative cause-effect relationships between identified soil C sequestration strategies and land use. In particular, there is a need to understand how processes are spatially and temporally distributed across diverse landscapes. Existing soil mapping systems may be used as a starting point for inventory of soil carbon and their relation to specific soil management and positions on landscapes. The mission may also include the development of new and improved methodologies and sensors to obtain field-representative mineralogical, chemical, biological and physical measurements for the development of soil carbon sequestration strategies. In addition, the mission may develop and refine process-based field-scale simulation models, and integrate these models with GIS methods for inventory of soil C in the California landscape. The social and economic impact of soil carbon processes and management to sequester soil carbon has received very little attention but is essential to develop policy options to maintain the competitiveness of California's natural resource products in regional and global markets.
