Modelling the Whole Profile Soil Organic Carbon Dynamics Considering Soil Redistribution under Future Climate Change and Landscape Projections over the Lower Hunter Valley, Australia

Yuxin Ma (), Budiman Minasny, Valérie Viaud, Christian Walter, Brendan Malone and Alex McBratney
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Yuxin Ma: Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Budiman Minasny: Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Valérie Viaud: INRAE, UMR 1069, SAS, 65 Rue de Saint-Brieuc, F-35000 Rennes, France
Christian Walter: UMR SAS, Institut Agro, INRAE, F-35000 Rennes, France
Brendan Malone: CSIRO Agriculture and Food, Black Mountain, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
Alex McBratney: Sydney Institute of Agriculture, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Land, 2023, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: Soil organic carbon (SOC) storage and redistribution across the landscape (through erosion and deposition) are linked to soil physicochemical properties and can affect soil quality. However, the spatial and temporal variability of soil erosion and SOC remains uncertain. Whether soil redistribution leads to SOC gains or losses continues to be hotly debated. These considerations cannot be modelled using conventional soil carbon models and digital soil mapping. This paper presents a coupled-model combining RothPC-1 which considers soil carbon (C) down to 1 m and a soil redistribution model. The soil redistribution component is based on a cellular automata technique using the multi-direction flow (FD8) algorithm. With the optimized input values based on land use, we simulated SOC changes upon soil profiles to 1 m across the Lower Hunter Valley area (11,300 ha) in New South Wales, Australia from the 1970s to 2016. Results were compared to field observations and showed that erosion was predicted mostly in upslope areas and deposition in low-lying areas. We further simulated SOC trends from 2017 until ~2045 in the area under three climate scenarios and five land use projections. The variation in the magnitude and direction of SOC change with different projections shows that the main factors influencing SOC changes considering soil redistribution are climate change which controlled the trend of SOC stocks, followed by land use change. Neglecting soil erosion in carbon models could lead to an overestimation of SOC stocks. This paper provides a framework for incorporating soil redistribution into the SOC dynamics modelling and also postulates the thinking that soil erosion is not just a removal process by surface runoff.

Keywords: soil erosion; soil organic carbon; climate change projections; land use change; dynamic modelling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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