Studies of Regional and Global

Environmental Change

 

  
 
 
 

Modeling Boreal soil carbon dynamics

 

Boreal and arctic ecosystems contain vast stocks of soil carbon, much of it frozen or waterlogged and present in conditions that are differ substantially from temperate settings. Our modeling research focuses on develompent of an improved ability to predict the stability of boreal soil C in the future through the development and testing of new modeling tools and approaches.

 

Modeling Tools

We will be providing downloadable code for our boreal models here in the near future. These models are provided in the hopes that others will adopt and test these approaches.

Research Results

Most of our modeling efforts focus on Interior Alaska and Canada. Our current work is supported by the US Department of Energy NICCR program. A annotated bibliography of our work in this area is provided below. You can find out more information about our current DOE project as well as links to project results here.

 

Z. Fan, J.C. Neff, J. Harden, and K.P. Wickland. In Review. Boreal soil carbon dynamics under a changing climate: a model inversion approach. JGR - Biogeosciences. This manuscript describes a revision and extension of the Carrasco et al., model listed below. The model is applied to three sites and inverse parameter estimation is used to estimate values for soil organic matter turnover at multiple layers of soil. This study, like much of our experimental work, suggests that the inherant turnover rates of boreal soils are relatively fast with the exception of poorly drained sites, and that both surface and deeper (up to 40 cm) soils are inherantly similar in structure and potential turnover.

Carrasco, J.J., J.C. Neff, and J.W. Harden. Modeling the long term accumulation of carbon in boreal soils. (2006)Journal of Geophysical Research – Biogeosciences, 111, G02004, doi:10.1029/2005JG000087 This paper presents a new approach to modeling boreal soils. We describe and test a new soil biogeochemical model that simluates the growth and change of soil organic layers over a ~6000 year period for sites in boreal Canada. This approach to modeling, though unusual, appears to be a more realistic approach to simulating this important global carbon pool and illustrates the importance of the soil thermal regime in the stabilization of sub-surface carbon. PDF