EDI Staging Environment
Soil organic matter (SOM) is a critical linkage among many ecosystem services that sustain our society and life on Earth. It is the primary food source for microbes and the principal storehouse of water necessary for plant growth. SOM also stores nutrients for plants and absorbs pollutants that otherwise could contaminate food and water supplies. Soils also help regulate climate by storing carbon that would otherwise be released to the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. This project investigates processes in the soil that protect SOM from being completely consumed by microbes and conversely, processes that could increase its sensitivity to environmental changes. The researchers will also study how climate change and changes in how land is managed affect the amount and stability of SOM. The project involves a large number of researchers and laboratories in conducting a wide range of SOM analyses. It takes advantage of soil samples already collected by the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), a major NSF investment in environmental monitoring that covers the entire United States. The samples will be preserved and the data that results from this project made fully public via the web. The evolution of a new paradigm, where the primary controls on SOM dynamics are less dependent on molecular structure than on other soil and ecosystem properties, has created a knowledge gap in our ability to predict the response of SOM to environmental change. The relationships among shifting controls over different SOM stabilization mechanisms, ranging from distal factors operating at broad spatial scales (e.g., climate) to proximal controls operating at finer spatial scales (e.g., soil physicochemical properties), are poorly defined. Investigators will test the emerging paradigm by quantifying relationships between the dominant mechanisms of SOM stabilization and the scale of the ecosystem controls (i.e., fine-scale, proximal vs. broad-scale, distal) across a continental-scale system of soil types and ecological domains, utilizing soil samples collected during the construction of NEON. This project will be the first continental-scale assessment of SOM vulnerability and will yield new, predictive insights into controls on SOM stability across soil types, land-use types and environmental gradients. The results will significantly improve our understanding of SOM dynamics, a fundamental scientific advancement in its own right, while also enabling better representation of soils in ecosystem and coupled carbon-climate models. The project represents a new standard in open, community-oriented research, supporting participation by researchers from universities, government and non-government agencies. It will facilitate collaboration through major scientific networks that are increasingly necessary to conduct science at the scale needed to address the complex issues facing society. Graduate and undergraduate students will receive training in state-of-the-science methods of soil science by participating in this research, and insights derived from it will inform decisions by policymakers and resource managers concerned with carbon sequestration and ecosystem services.
EDI is a collaboration between the University of New Mexico and the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Center for Limnology:
