Importance and strength of environmental controllers of soil organic carbon changes with scale
Abstract
Spatial heterogeneity in environmental factors on the land surface moderates exchanges of water, energy, and greenhouse gases between the land and the atmosphere. However, appropriately representing this heterogeneity in earth system models remains a critical scientific challenge. We used a large dataset of environmental factors (n = 31) representing soil-forming factors, field observations of soil organic carbon (SOC) (n = 6213), and a machine-learning algorithm (Cubist) to analyze the scaling behavior of SOC across the conterminous United States. We found that various environmental factors are significant predictors of SOC stocks at different spatial scales. Out of the 31 environmental factors we investigated, only 13 were significant predictors of SOC stocks at spatial scales ranging from 100 m to 50 km. Overall, topographic variables had higher influence at finer scales, whereas climatic variables were more important at coarser scales. The model performance worsened with increasing scale or the spatial resolution of prediction (R-2 = 0.38-0.65). The strength of environmental controls (median regression coefficient) on SOC weakened with scale, and we represented them using mathematical functions (R-2 = 0.38-0.98). Both the mean and variance of SOC stocks decreased linearly with increasing the scale in soils of the conterminous United States. Fitted linearmore »
- Authors:
- Publication Date:
- Research Org.:
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Sponsoring Org.:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Biological and Environmental Research (BER)
- OSTI Identifier:
- 1770498
- Alternate Identifier(s):
- OSTI ID: 1648909; OSTI ID: 1659109
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357; DE‐AC02‐05CH11231; AC05-00OR22725; AC02‐05CH11231
- Resource Type:
- Published Article
- Journal Name:
- Geoderma
- Additional Journal Information:
- Journal Name: Geoderma Journal Volume: 375 Journal Issue: C; Journal ID: ISSN 0016-7061
- Publisher:
- Elsevier
- Country of Publication:
- Netherlands
- Language:
- English
- Subject:
- 54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES; Soil organic carbon; Digital soil mapping; Scaling; Earth system models; digital soil mapping; earth system models; scaling; soil carbon
Citation Formats
Adhikari, K., Mishra, U., Owens, P. R., Libohova, Z., Wills, S. A., Riley, W. J., Hoffman, F. M., and Smith, D. R. Importance and strength of environmental controllers of soil organic carbon changes with scale. Netherlands: N. p., 2020.
Web. doi:10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114472.
Adhikari, K., Mishra, U., Owens, P. R., Libohova, Z., Wills, S. A., Riley, W. J., Hoffman, F. M., & Smith, D. R. Importance and strength of environmental controllers of soil organic carbon changes with scale. Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114472
Adhikari, K., Mishra, U., Owens, P. R., Libohova, Z., Wills, S. A., Riley, W. J., Hoffman, F. M., and Smith, D. R. Thu .
"Importance and strength of environmental controllers of soil organic carbon changes with scale". Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114472.
@article{osti_1770498,
title = {Importance and strength of environmental controllers of soil organic carbon changes with scale},
author = {Adhikari, K. and Mishra, U. and Owens, P. R. and Libohova, Z. and Wills, S. A. and Riley, W. J. and Hoffman, F. M. and Smith, D. R.},
abstractNote = {Spatial heterogeneity in environmental factors on the land surface moderates exchanges of water, energy, and greenhouse gases between the land and the atmosphere. However, appropriately representing this heterogeneity in earth system models remains a critical scientific challenge. We used a large dataset of environmental factors (n = 31) representing soil-forming factors, field observations of soil organic carbon (SOC) (n = 6213), and a machine-learning algorithm (Cubist) to analyze the scaling behavior of SOC across the conterminous United States. We found that various environmental factors are significant predictors of SOC stocks at different spatial scales. Out of the 31 environmental factors we investigated, only 13 were significant predictors of SOC stocks at spatial scales ranging from 100 m to 50 km. Overall, topographic variables had higher influence at finer scales, whereas climatic variables were more important at coarser scales. The model performance worsened with increasing scale or the spatial resolution of prediction (R-2 = 0.38-0.65). The strength of environmental controls (median regression coefficient) on SOC weakened with scale, and we represented them using mathematical functions (R-2 = 0.38-0.98). Both the mean and variance of SOC stocks decreased linearly with increasing the scale in soils of the conterminous United States. Fitted linear functions accounted for 81% and 82% of the variability in the mean and variance of SOC, respectively. We also found linear relationships among mean and high-order moments of SOC (R-2 = 0.51-0.97). Improved understanding of the scaling behavior of SOC stocks and their environmental controllers can improve earth system model benchmarking and may eventually improve representation of the spatial heterogeneity of land surface biogeochemistry.},
doi = {10.1016/j.geoderma.2020.114472},
journal = {Geoderma},
number = C,
volume = 375,
place = {Netherlands},
year = {Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2020},
month = {Thu Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2020}
}
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