Climate legacies drive global soil carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems
نویسندگان
چکیده
Climatic conditions shift gradually over millennia, altering the rates at which carbon (C) is fixed from the atmosphere and stored in the soil. However, legacy impacts of past climates on current soil C stocks are poorly understood. We used data from more than 5000 terrestrial sites from three global and regional data sets to identify the relative importance of current and past (Last Glacial Maximum and mid-Holocene) climatic conditions in regulating soil C stocks in natural and agricultural areas. Paleoclimate always explained a greater amount of the variance in soil C stocks than current climate at regional and global scales. Our results indicate that climatic legacies help determine global soil C stocks in terrestrial ecosystems where agriculture is highly dependent on current climatic conditions. Our findings emphasize the importance of considering how climate legacies influence soil C content, allowing us to improve quantitative predictions of global C stocks under different climatic scenarios.
منابع مشابه
Comment on “Climate legacies drive global soil carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystems”
Delgado-Baquerizo et al. (Science Advances, 12 April 2017, e1602008) use statistical correlations to infer that paleoclimate (6000 to 22,000 years ago) is a more important driver of current soil organic carbon stocks than the current-day climate. On the other hand, a wealth of radiocarbon measurements indicates that the organic carbon in most topsoils is only a few decades to perhaps a few cent...
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متن کاملResponse to comment on “Climate legacies drive global soil carbon stocks in terrestrial ecosystem”
The technical comment from Sanderman provides a unique opportunity to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms explaining the role of paleoclimate in the contemporary distribution of global soil C content, as reported in our article. Sanderman argues that the role of paleoclimate in predicting soil C content might be accounted for by using slowly changing soil properties as predictors. This i...
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