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Title: A new data set for estimating organic carbon storage to 3 m depth in soils of the northern circumpolar permafrost region

Journal Article · · Earth System Science Data (Online)
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [6];  [7];  [8];  [9];  [1];  [10];  [11];  [1];  [10];  [12];  [13];  [14];  [15];  [15];  [13] more »;  [16] « less
  1. Stockholm Univ., Stockholm (Sweden)
  2. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
  3. Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME (United States)
  4. Univ. of Copenhagen, Copenhagen (Denmark); The Univ. Centre in Svalbard, Longyearbyen (Norway)
  5. Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK (United States)
  6. U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  7. U.S. Forest Service, Newton Square, PA (United States)
  8. Alaska Ecoscience, Fairbanks, AK (United States)
  9. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  10. Univ. of Alaska Fairbanks, Palmer, AK (United States)
  11. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
  12. National Park Service, Fairbanks, AK (United States)
  13. Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research Unit Potsdam, Potsdam (Germany)
  14. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)
  15. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
  16. Lehigh Univ., Bethlehem, PA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

High-latitude terrestrial ecosystems are key components in the global carbon cycle. The Northern Circumpolar Soil Carbon Database (NCSCD) was developed to quantify stocks of soil organic carbon (SOC) in the northern circumpolar permafrost region (a total area of 18.7 × 106 km2). The NCSCD is a geographical information system (GIS) data set that has been constructed using harmonized regional soil classification maps together with pedon data from the northern permafrost region. Previously, the NCSCD has been used to calculate SOC storage to the reference depths 0–30 cm and 0–100 cm (based on 1778 pedons). It has been shown that soils of the northern circumpolar permafrost region also contain significant quantities of SOC in the 100–300 cm depth range, but there has been no circumpolar compilation of pedon data to quantify this deeper SOC pool and there are no spatially distributed estimates of SOC storage below 100 cm depth in this region. Here we describe the synthesis of an updated pedon data set for SOC storage (kg C m-2) in deep soils of the northern circumpolar permafrost regions, with separate data sets for the 100–200 cm (524 pedons) and 200–300 cm (356 pedons) depth ranges. These pedons have been grouped into the North American and Eurasian sectors and the mean SOC storage for different soil taxa (subdivided into Gelisols including the sub-orders Histels, Turbels, Orthels, permafrost-free Histosols, and permafrost-free mineral soil orders) has been added to the updated NCSCDv2. The updated version of the data set is freely available online in different file formats and spatial resolutions that enable spatially explicit applications in GIS mapping and terrestrial ecosystem models. While this newly compiled data set adds to our knowledge of SOC in the 100–300 cm depth range, it also reveals that large uncertainties remain. Identified data gaps include spatial coverage of deep (> 100 cm) pedons in many regions as well as the spatial extent of areas with thin soils overlying bedrock and the quantity and distribution of massive ground ice. An open access data-portal for the pedon data set and the GIS-data sets is available online at http://bolin.su.se/data/ncscd/. The NCSCDv2 data set has a digital object identifier

Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Science Foundation (NSF); Argonne National Laboratory; USDOE Office of Science (SC); Bolin Centre for Climate Research; Norwegian Radiation Protection Authority; Swedish Research Council (SRC)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
1392649
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1395019
Journal Information:
Earth System Science Data (Online), Vol. 5, Issue 2; ISSN 1866-3516
Publisher:
CopernicusCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 122 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (42)

Evaluation and Enhancement of Permafrost Modeling With the NASA Catchment Land Surface Model: PERMAFROST MODELING WITH THE NASA CLSM journal November 2017
Inter‐annual simulation of global carbon cycle variations in a terrestrial–aquatic continuum journal November 2019
Effect of Terrain Characteristics on Soil Organic Carbon and Total Nitrogen Stocks in Soils of Herschel Island, Western Canadian Arctic: Geomorphic Disturbance, SOC and TN journal December 2015
Controls of soil organic matter on soil thermal dynamics in the northern high latitudes journal July 2019
Expansion of high-latitude deciduous forests driven by interactions between climate warming and fire journal August 2019
Reduced net methane emissions due to microbial methane oxidation in a warmer Arctic journal March 2020
Patchy field sampling biases understanding of climate change impacts across the Arctic journal July 2018
Path-dependent reductions in CO2 emission budgets caused by permafrost carbon release journal September 2018
Extensive loss of past permafrost carbon but a net accumulation into present-day soils journal August 2018
Late Holocene ice-wedge polygon dynamics in northeastern Siberian coastal lowlands journal January 2018
Elevation-based upscaling of organic carbon stocks in High-Arctic permafrost terrain: a storage and distribution assessment for Spitsbergen, Svalbard journal January 2017
Arctic lakes are continuous methane sources to the atmosphere under warming conditions journal May 2015
Tundra plant above-ground biomass and shrub dominance mapped across the North Slope of Alaska journal February 2018
21st century tundra shrubification could enhance net carbon uptake of North America Arctic tundra under an RCP8.5 climate trajectory journal May 2018
Dissolved organic carbon and nitrogen release from boreal Holocene permafrost and seasonally frozen soils of Alaska journal June 2018
Pathway-dependent fate of permafrost region carbon journal August 2018
Evaluation of simulated soil carbon dynamics in Arctic-Boreal ecosystems journal February 2020
The permafrost carbon inventory on the Tibetan Plateau: a new evaluation using deep sediment cores journal March 2016
Direct and indirect climate change effects on carbon dioxide fluxes in a thawing boreal forest-wetland landscape journal March 2017
The unseen iceberg: plant roots in arctic tundra journal September 2014
Assessing the spatial variability in peak season CO 2 exchange characteristics across the Arctic tundra using a light response curve parameterization journal January 2014
Estimated stocks of circumpolar permafrost carbon with quantified uncertainty ranges and identified data gaps journal January 2014
Evaluation of terrestrial pan-Arctic carbon cycling using a data-assimilation system journal January 2019
Global Carbon Budget 2018 journal January 2018
Global Carbon Budget 2019 journal January 2019
ORCHIDEE MICT-LEAK (r5459), a global model for the production, transport, and transformation of dissolved organic carbon from Arctic permafrost regions – Part 1: Rationale, model description, and simulation protocol journal January 2019
PALADYN v1.0, a comprehensive land surface–vegetation–carbon cycle model of intermediate complexity journal January 2016
Permafrost-affected soils and their carbon pools with a focus on the Russian Arctic journal January 2014
Stability and biodegradability of organic matter from Arctic soils of Western Siberia: insights from 13C-NMR spectroscopy and elemental analysis journal January 2016
Permafrost soils and carbon cycling journal January 2015
Permafrost variability over the Northern Hemisphere based on the MERRA-2 reanalysis journal January 2019
Geophysical mapping of palsa peatland permafrost journal January 2015
Late Holocene ice-wedge polygon dynamics in northeastern Siberian coastal lowlands text January 2019
Global carbon budget 2019 text January 2019
Path-dependent reductions in CO2 emission budgets caused by permafrost carbon release text January 2018
PALADYN v1.0, a comprehensive land surface-vegetation-carbon cycle model of intermediate complexity journal April 2016
Permafrost soils and carbon cycling journal January 2014
Geophysical mapping of palsa peatland permafrost posted_content October 2014
Global Carbon Budget 2018 text January 2018
Global carbon budget 2019 text January 2019
Global Carbon Budget 2019 text January 2019
Model structures amplify uncertainty in predicted soil carbon responses to climate change journal June 2018

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54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
soil organic carbon permafrost circumpolar database